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T’OTHER DEAR CHARMER 

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T’OTHER 


DEAR CHARMER 


BY 




HELEN ^THE^ 


AUTHOR OF 


“the mystery of no. 13,” “my ro, JOHN,” ETC. 


r 



NEW YORK 

JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY 

150 WORTH ST., COR. MISSION PLACE 


Copyright, 1892, 

BY 

UNITED STATES BOOK COMPANY, 


[A// rights reserved^ 


T’OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


CHAPTER I. 

» 

“Yes, kind sir, I am within, 

Softly do I sit and spin. ” 

It flaunted its charming, fragrant head over 
the wall, crying out as plainly as a white 
rose may speak, “ Pick me if you can ! ” but 
its real charm in the gazer’s eyes lay in its 
hanging just out of his reach, and in its sug- 
gestion of the shade and coolness of the 
garden in which it grew. 

He was tired and hot and hungry. The 
walk that had seemed but a trifle to him, 
when he started in such splendid condition 
and bounding spirits that morning, had be- 


6 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


come in the heat of the sun a very much 
longer one than he had exjiected, and he 
longed for a draught of cider to quench his 
thirst, and a mouthful of bread and cheese 
with which to appease a very respectable 
appetite. 

But hotels do not flourish on that wild and 
picturesque way that lies between Seamouth 
and Regis, and which perhaps may measure 
five miles as the crow flies, but is far longer 
to the pedestrian, whose progress through 
that strange convulsion of nature known as 
the Landslip is necessarily difficult and slow. 

At once awe-inspiring and beautiful is this 
ravine of over two hundred feet in depth, 
formed by the sinking of an immense tract 
of land that descended with such regularity 
and precision towards the sea_ as to carry 
with it fields whose surfaces are now at the 
bottom of the cliff, and thrown into a slanting 
position instead of being level as before. 

Great columnar masses, resembling vast 
pinnacles or towers of chalk, are in some 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


7 


places left standing, whilst the more broken 
and crushed parts have sunk around them, 
and immense banks of flint and broken rock 
rise in hillocks on every side, the ground 
being rent and scored in seams many feet 
wide and deep. 

And over this terrific manifestation of 
Nature in a rage, she had herself drawn a 
mantle of green loveliness, covering up ten- 
derly the ravages she had made, planting and 
sowing at her own sweet will, till now, after 
fifty years, the scene is exquisite, even to en- 
chantment, and none who have ever looked 
upon it could rest until they have looked again. 

Hugh Valentine knew it all by heart, and 
for very love of it had come that way, instead 
of by the convenient road that ran straight 
away on the other side of the cliff, and which 
a young man in such haste as he, should 
naturally have taken that morning. 

Indeed, even while he glanced up at that 
white rose, he knew himself to be considerably 
behind time where he was expected, yet with 


8 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


all a man’s obstinacy he lingered, wanting the 
flower, of course, since he could not get it, 
and curious too, for how came this descend- 
ant of many a blooming generation to be 
growing close to a brand-new, ugly brick 
wall, that he was quite positive had not been 
here when last he had crossed the Slip ? He 
remembered the cottage well enough, with 
its back to the cliff, and a considerable gar- 
den reclaimed from the broken -up ground 
around, but the wall— its newness showing 
in startling contrast against the age of its 
picturesquely beautiful surroundings, and 
making a jarring note of discord in the scene, 
who had built it, and what was the treasure 
within it that required such jealous keeping ? 

The spot was so lonely, that, save for the 
dwellers in it, or a chance pedestrian, no one 
need ever know of its existence, and surely 
to such a place as this might steal some 

‘‘Youthful hermitess, 

Beauteous in the wildemess4^’ 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER. 9 

and so altogether escape the echoes of the 
wicked world. 

“Here goes,” said Hugh, as he began to 
pile up stones against the wall. “I wonder 
how the mysterious one goes out or in? 
Ha ! A little postern door that locks inside, 
and has no bell,” and he proceeded to mount 
the piled-up cairn; but with that curious opti- 
cal illusion from which most people suffer in 
calculating heights, he found himself still too 
far from the top of the wall to look over it, 
though the rose was now easily within his 
grasp. 

Confidently enough he stretched a covetous 
hand, only to have it promptly pounced upon, 
dragged downwards, and held in a warm firm 
grasp that he tried in vain to shake off, the 
more so as hiscaptor’s other hand came to the 
aid of its fellow, and seized his wrist. 

For a moment, irritation slew his sense of 
humour, and he only felt acutely that there 
was a fool on one side of the wall, and some- 
body laughing at him on the other, for he heard 


10 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


a most distinct chuckle, feminine, of course, 
since who but a woman would be so mali- 
ciously quick to take advantage of his folly? 
Meanwhile his bondage hurt confoundedly, 
for bones do not usually adapt themselves 
easily to the angles of stone walls, and very 
soon patience forsook him, and he cried out 
savagely : 

“ Do you want to break my arm, you-over^ 
there ? ” 

You-over-there let go of him with such sud- 
denness that he lost his balance on the top of 
the stones, and rolled over into soft dust on 
his back. The accident restored his good 
temper, and he laughed aloud, being echoed 
softly, as he thought, by the sharp person on 
the other side of the wall, whom he had now 
made up his mind to see, or perish. 

“ Perhaps she’ll go for me with a rake or 
a shovel, the moment my head appears,” he 
soliloquised, as he fetched and carried more 
stones. “ Any way. I'll risk it.” 

His blue eyes — blue as the diamond-strewn 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER, 


II 


sea below — lit up, and, fired by the manly 
resolve to get his own way that is the most 
deeply rooted of all instincts in the male breast, 
his spirits rose to buoyancy as he placed the 
last stone in position, and then — he might 
have expected as much, knowing the nature 
of women — his pride of victory was snatched 
from him, for whirling over the wall came the 
white rose, giving his forehead a spiteful little 
scratch as it struck him. He picked it out 
of the dust unthankfully, unmollified even by 
its sweet scent ; then looked up quickly and 
keenly at the top of the wall as if he expected 
to see the hand that flung it — not an old one 
he dared swear — the fling was too impulsive 
for that, and old women were not so mischiev- 
ous as to spoil a young man’s enterprise in 
such fashion, or so coquettish as to beckon 
him in without saying a single word. And 
yet, who but a red-cheeked Devonshire peas- 
ant was likely to be found in a cottage perched 
on a cleft of a landslip in such a position as 
only people tired of their lives could surely 


12 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


be found to occupy ? The thought checked 
his ardour. He was rather long in adjusting 
the rose in the belt that did duty for a button- 
hole, and possibly his silence bred curiosity 
in the breast on the other side of the wall, and 
curiosity begot active measures for gratifying 
the same ; but so it was, that when his head 
suddenly topped the wall, it almost came into 
collision with the ascending face of a laugh- 
ing, mischievous tom-boy. 

A tom -boy — that was his first impression 
of her, as, with a stifled cry and laugh in one 
the girl, scrambling down from some piled-up 
flower-pots, lost her footing, and plumped 
into the lap of a spreading cabbage with con- 
siderably more emphasis than grace, whence 
she looked up at him with soft and decidedly 
mischievous brown eyes. 

She wore a dainty, frilled apron and ker- 
chief of muslin over a lavender cotton, French 
in style and in cut, and her face was French, 
too, with its crown of fine dark curls and 
brunette tinting of eye, and brow, and lips. 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER, 


13 


“ You are a very tall man,” she said, with 
an admiring air, “ yours is the first hand I did 
ever see come over the wall. But you was 
a thief ” (she shook her head gravely), “ and 
did not deserve that I should give you the 
rose.” She stopped abruptly, and a look of 
distress and even fear overspread her features. 

I did forget,” she said, breathlessly ; “ you 
did startle me, and I did forget. I have 
given vay parole not to speak to nobody while 
M. le Docteur is away, and I have broken it,” 
and she turned as if to fly. 

“ But havinghxoV^Xi it,” said the young man, 
persuasively, and, it must be added, thirstily, 
“ you can’t mend it again, can you ? So you 
must not run away. One may as well be hung 
for a sheep as a lamb.” 

“ Oh, no,” she said, with tears in her eyes ; 
“ if one does do wrong, and repents — but 
when your hand did come over the wall, I 
said to myself, ‘ It is M. le Docteur, and I 
will play him one trick,’ for all day I have 
been in one wicked mood.” 


14 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


“ Your intentions were all right/' he said, 
consolingly, “ and who could blame you be- 
cause I — no, I mean the doctor — turned out to 
be somebody else. And really I’m very much 
obliged to you for that rose,” he said, in the 
pleasant tone that he reserved for women ; and 
pleasant enough he looked, with the sun 
touching his fair head and face, “ and I’m 
just coming over to thank you for being so 
kind.” 

“ No, no,” she cried, throwing out her hands, 
and showing signs of precipitate departure, 
but he had already drawn himself up by his 
hands to the top of the wall, and in another 
moment he was beside her. 

She changed colour, and retreated as he 
advanced. 

“ Why did you give me the rose ? ” he said, 
in his well-bred, masterful voice, “ if you didn’t 
mean me to come over and thank you for it ? ” 

“ Celestine will see you,” she said, glancing 
back at the distant cottage, half hidden in 
shrubs. “ She will tell M. le Docteur when 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 15 

he does come home. You must climb your- 
self back again, or I shall be scolded dreadful.” 
But her brown eyes said, “ Stay,” and he 
stood his ground, keeping a sharp look-out 
the while for Celestine. 

“ I am so tired,” he said, putting on as 
wornout and pitiful an air as his splendid 
condition permitted ; “ and it is so cool and 
pleasant here. May I not sit down a little 
while and rest ? ” 

A rustic summer-house stood by, with a 
bench in it, and a table, set sideways and out 
of the eye of the house, and he made straight 
for the little retreat, drawing the girl with 
him, who might as well have resisted a tidal 
wave that swept her in its course, so that she 
found herself seated beside him almost before 
she was aware. 

“ What a cruel little hand,” he said, looking 
down at the one lying on her knee ; “ and 
your thimble hurt me” (he assumed a look of 
agony), “ and if you hadn’t been as merciful 
as you are strong, I should be your prisoner 
now.” 


j 5 T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 

“ But I did take two to you,” she said, 
spreading out her ten fingers. 

“ And why did you?” he said, his eyes 
resting on her little soft dark face. “ When 
you have so many roses, why should you 
hinder my having that one ? ” 

She looked at him, and then, provoked 
into sudden hiliarty, threw her apron over 
her head, and burst into a fit of laughter, 
in which he joined heartily. 

“ Celestine is deaf,” he said, when they 
came out of it, or you never would have let 
me make all that noise. And as you asked 
me in — you did, you know” (as she shook 
the ruffled head that emerged from the apron) 
— “ and it’s such a thirsty day, might I beg 
for just a drink of water ? ” 

His blue eyes said “ cider ” as plain as 
they could speak. 

“ Vatter ?” she said, incredulously, “ I 
never did know a man yet who did drink 
vatter. But good cider” — she paused, her 
hospitable instincts suddenly checked by 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER, 1 7 

propriety, and looked at him dubiously, re- 
ceiving, however, so much encouragement 
that she ran nimbly off, showing the trimmest 
feet and ankles in the world. 

“ What a little duck,” said the young man 
aloud, thinking tenderly of her as a nectar- 
bearing machine, then wondered how on 
earth came this young French girl here.^ ” 

Who was she } And what authority over 
her had the evidently dreaded “ M. le Doc- 
teur”.? 

Then he saw her coming, a jug and glass 
in one hand, a plate of beard and cheese — 
real Devonshire blue cheese — in the other. 

“ Voila !" she said, as she set her burden 
on the table, “ it is now the time for my 
dejeuner, so I did tell Celestine I would eat 
it out here. Begin ! ” she cried, and clapped 
her hands for pleasure, and danced for joy as 
he took a deep draught of the cider, coming 
up smiling after it, like some thirsty plant 
rejoicing in August rains. 

“ Eat,” shesaid, when they had exchanged 


1 8 T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 

glances of satisfaction, and it was so plainly 
evident that nothing could please her better, 
that he set to immediately. 

“ But where is yours ? ” he said, remorse- 
fully, after his first mouthful, “ let’s go 
halves ? ” 

“ No,” she said, “ I am not ever hungry 
here ” — she shook her head sadly — “ it is 
always so triste, and I should have been 
glad,” she added, with a blush, “ to see any- 
body come over the wall ! ” 

Her words were bold, yet she glanced at 
him timidly (where was now the hoyden of a 
few minutes ago?), and there was something 
helpless and soft in her beauty that appealed 
irresistibly to his manliness, for, at heart, all 
men love the pretty fools who draw forth their 
strength and masterfulness to the full. 

And then he began to wonder what was 
her name ? Now this curiosity of most people 
about other people’s names has always been 
something that I never could understand. 
Whether they meet in society or in the desert, 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


19 


the first thing to be got at is— each other’s 
names. What does your name matter } 
There is the person, there is you, the badge 
that has been artificially attached to you in 
no way affects your personality, so why bother 
about it.? Yet most people do. 

“ You are very kind to me, Marie,” said 
the young man presently. 

“ I am not Marie,” she said, quite simply; 
“ I am Felida.” 

He repeated the name after her. 

“ It is like you,” he said, and longed for 
more. 

“ And you,” she said, no less curious than 
he, “ how do you call yourself .? 

“ Hugh Valentine — at your service — an 
artist, staying at Regis, and now on my way 
to pay a — a morning call at Seamouth. Do 
you like pictures ? ” he added quickly. 

“ Yes,” she said wistfully, “ but I do never 
see any — not never.” 

“ I often make sketches of the Slip,” he 
said, then paused, and coloured up, checking 
the words he had meant to say. 


20 


T'OTHER HEAR CHARMER. 


“ I do not know your Slip, and I do not 
see anything, not anything at all,” she said 
sadly. “ I did give my parole ioo that I would 
not look over the wall,” — she blushed and 
hung her head, then drew a bit of embroidery 
out of her pocket, and began to sew as she 
spoke. She made a restful figure, with grace 
in its every line, as she leaned her back 
against the entrance of the arbour. 

“ Is Monsieur le Docteur your husband 
said Hugh, boldly. 

She glanced down suddenly at her hand 
as if looking for something, and a look of 
trouble, almost of confusion, overspread the 
girl’s face; she put up her hand as if to hide 
it, and half turned away. 

“ And do you live here always? ” pursued 
the unabashed Hugh. 

“ No,’' she said, “ it will be only for a little 
while. How long will I have been here, 
weeks or months ? ” She bent her brows as 
if in puzzled thought, then stamped her foot 
impatiently, as if such puzzling angered her. 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


21 


“ And do you never go out ?” he said. 

“ Never, ’ her face clouded to almost sullen- 
ness, “ never to the outside of the garden, and 
I do love the sea.” A curious look as of 
awakened memory came into her eyes. “ But 
there is only my needlework and Celestine.” 

“ Your home is in France,” he said, as one 
stating a fact ; but this time she would not 
answer, and, thinking that her averted figure 
preserved a certain air of offence, he began 
to speak of the picturesque beauty of the 
Landslip, and the many quaintnesses of the 
little old town from which he had come a 
few hours before. 

He was startled to find that she did not 
even know its name. Did she even know 
she was in Devonshire } he wondered. Was 
there not something of the irresponsibility of 
a child in her face and manner.^ Gay, legere, 
she seemed to bend to every passing influence 
without thought, and gave him the idea of a 
being full of surprises. 

“Good-bye,” he said, suddenly standing 


2 2 T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 

up, “ and do you know that I have made a 
discovery ? Celestine is lame as well as deaf, 
and it is only M. le Docteur whom you fear. 
And thank you ” — he pressed her little hand, 
and looked as if he would have added more, 
then mounted the flower-pots, and was over 
the wall and out of sight in a twinkling. 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER, 


23 


CHAPTER II. 

** Where hae ye been, my dear brither, 

Sae late o' coming in ? 

I hae been at the schule, sister, 

Learning young clerks to sing." 

The Bow House was crammed, filled to 
overflowing with boys and girls, servants and 
children, with dogs that barked, birds that 
shrieked, and rival tradesmen who blocked 
the gangway, and energetically competed 
with each other for an interview with the 
mistress of the house. 

That lady was in the act of descending the 
stairs at the moment of Hugh Valentine’s 
appearance, but as a fat little grocer — too 
eager suppliant for custom — actually dashed 
up a few steps to meet her, she turned incon- 
tinently and fled, with an expression on her 


24 


T OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


countenance that boded little success to her 
pursuer. 

“ Where is Dosia ? ” said the young man 
to a little maid running past with a puppy 
tightly clutched in her arms, who was rolling 
his eyes about wildly in search of escape. 

But the little maid — Dosia’s sister, clearly 
enough, by her eyes — didn’t know. 

“ Isn’t he a sweet little puppy ?” she added, 
holding him up to the young man’s inspection, 
an opportunity instantly seized by the pup to 
jump out of her arms, and draw her promptly 
after him in full chase. 

“ Where’s Dosia ? ” he inquired next, of a 
solemn -faced boy who was sliding down the 
banisters, and no satisfactory reply being 
forthcoming, the cry of “ Where’s Dosia ? ” 
was passed on from mouth to mouth, till in 
every chamber from attic to cellar the name 
of Dosia resounded. 

But she was not in the house, nor, though 
half-a-dozen boys and girls helped to look, 
was she in the garden either, nor in the sta- 


7 ” O THER DEA R CHARMER. 


25 


bles, nor in the wash-house, nor the piggery, 
though the young Trehernes conscientiously 
explored all of these places in turn. 

Now, being a man, this difficulty in finding 
the young woman, though he had lingered 
half a day on his road to Seamouth, whetted 
Hugh’s desire so greatly to behold her, that 
when, having left all his little fellow-toilers 
behind, he climbed to an orchard at the top 
of a hill behind the kitchen-garden, and saw 
her walking under the trees towards him, his 
heart actually leaped for joy. 

It is been said that the devil himself is no 
judge of a horse in harness, or of a woman in 
her war-paint, but if Hugh had ever thought 
for a moment that Dosia’s mantua-maker, or 
hairdresser, or jeweller had given a fictitious 
value to her charms in town, the sight of her 
as she came through the calm, low, level light 
of the summer evening in her simple white 
gown, disabused his mind of such an idea for 
all time. 

She was angry with him, offended at his 


26 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


long tarrying on the road, and the attitude of 
waiting is one that no girl of spirit can fill 
with grace and comfort, yet wishful as she was 
to mark her displeasure, so natural was she, 
and so true and warm beat her heart beneath 
all its veneer of worldliness, that her eyes 
gave him welcome, and the blush in her face 
was almost a caress as he stooped his head 
over her slender wrist and kissed it. 

Perhaps both were thinking that his greet- 
ing would have been differently applied if 
in town she had said, “Yes,” instead of 
“ Wait.” 

“ Where is the enfant terrible ? ” he said 
looking round anxiously for his old, or rather 
his young but terrible enemy, Onny, that 
small detective, that ruthless nipper-in-the- 
bud of Dosia’s flirtations, who would escape 
from the schoolroom in town to spoil Hugh’s 
opportunities, accompany them in their walks 
abroad, and refuse even fabulous bribes to 
leave them. 

“ He did not know you were coming,” said 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


27 


Dosia, laughing, “ or he would never have 
deserted his post.” 

“ Can’t you give him a hint to be off duty 
a bit now we are in the country ? ” said Hugh 
ruefully. “ That cherub will have an awful 
lot to answer for some day. He ruined poor 
Mademoiselle’s chances by obtruding himself 
at a delicate moment ” 

“ And are you afraid of his ruining mine, 
sir ? ” said Dosia saucily. 

“ If you look at me again like that, Dosia, 
I’ll kiss you,” said Hugh. 

“ Isn’t it a dear old place ? ” said Dosia 
hurriedly. “ But you have probably seen it 
before, as you come every year to Regis.” 

“ Yes, I know it,” he said, as they turned 
and strolled along side by side, “ but never 
have I seen it and its six bow-windows so 
crammed with humanity as they are now! 
How many hundreds of brothers and sisters 
have you ? ” 

“I hardly know,” she said, stopping to 
turn alarmed eyes upon his. “ In town, where 


28 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


we are for the greater part of the year, I 
only see them in instalments, but every time 
we come here, it strikes me there are two or 
three fresh ones ! And they are not nearly 
all home from school yet ! I do believe it’s 
the only house dad knows of that would take 
us all in,” she went on, “ and thafs why he 
comes every year, and because he doesn’t 
believe in any sea-air that has not a smack 
of fish in it ! No doubt you have already 
discovered that peculiarity of Seamouth ? ” 

“ Yes. We haven’t got it at Regis, and 
yet the two places are so close to each 
other ” 

“ Regis looks down upon us,” said Dosia, 
with airy scorn. “We have no Cobb wall — 
no pretence at a harbour, and only a palpable 
one at a library, and no society ! But fortu- 
nately we of the Bow House are not depend- 
ent for that on our neighbours.” 

Hugh laughed. 

“ Let us sit down,” he said. “ There’s 
an awfully pretty view from this corner,” and 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


29 


they did sit down, and he looked at her, while 
she looked at the sea. 

“ Mr. Valentine ” she said. 

“ Hugh,” he corrected. 

“ Hugh, don’t you feel like Carraway 
Bones in Turned Up ? ” 

“ No. Why } ” 

“ Because I shall never again see any two 
people sitting on a rustic seat without think- 
ing of Carraway Bones beside a pretty girl, 
drenched to the skin, saying, ‘ Brandy inside 
— water out’ How I laughed that night. 
It makes me ill now to think of him.” 

“How long have I been Mr. Valentine 
said Hugh thoughtfully. 

“ Oh ! a long while. When a man takes 
twenty-four hours to get over the four miles 
that separate him from ” 

“ Five,” put in Hugh. 

Dosia turned full round and looked at the 
young man, then looked again and frowned 
as at something that displeased her. 

“ Hugh,” she said, “how — how dreadfully 
fair you are ! ” 


30 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


“Dosia,” he said, “ how dreadfully, dread- 
fully fair you are ! ” • 

“Its such a pity,” said the girl, in an 
accent of alert concern. “ I’ve had my mis- 
givings before — but now I’m sure of it. We 
are two regular gingers together ! ” 

“ It’s only too true,” acquiesced Hugh. 

“ When I first met you,” went on Dosia, 
still surveying him with dolorous eyes, “ I 
thought you were dark, quite dark. To be 
sure the room was almost pitchy. Lady 

B always draws all her curtains, and 

lights her smallest candles on a glorious 
summer’s afternoon, and one day I actually 
sat down on a most respectable old gentle- 
man’s knee, thinking he was a chair. But 
you gave me the impression oi being a dark 
man, and afterwards — you know, it’s never 

really light in town, and — and- ” 

“You are disappointed, Dosia, ’’said Hugh, 
“ and to tell you the truth, I thought you 

were quite dark too, and — and ” 

“ It’s my wretched hair,” said Dosia de- 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


3 * 


jectedly, putting up a slim hand to a curling, 
waving mass piled to perfection above her 
head. “ It’s quite brown in the shade, and 
downright fair in the sun ! And green eyes 
are always brown or black in the dark — and 
that’s how it all happened,” she added, in a 
lamentable voice. 

“ What happened } ” said Hugh, leaning 
forward to look at her. 

“ Oh ! nothing ! ” And Dosia turned one 
of those beautiful nuques, that seem natural to 
fair-haired women, upon him, forcing him to 
think, by sheer force of contrast, upon a smart 
little dark head seen for the first time that 
day. 

“ What happened ? ” said Hugh insistently, 
and encroaching very considerably on her 
share of the seat. 

“Come and see the rose-garden!” she 
said, starting up and gliding away with great 
rapidity over the grass. “ Isn’t it odd-^it’s 
on the other side of the house — across the 
road 1 ” 


22 T'OTHER HEAR CHARMER. 

“ Dosia,” said Hugh, putting his hand com- 
pellingly through her arm, a civil question 
requires a civil answer. You haven’t left 
school long enough to forget thatr 

Dosia turned and looked at him with those 
green eyes of hers that had all the change, 
and life, and sparkle of the sea, and said: 

“ If you had come earlier in the day, Hugh, 

I might have answered, but I shan't now ! 
Here comes the Boss,” she added, as a bright 
little terrier rushed towards them, heading a 
posse of young Trehernes, who were still 
searching for Dosia, but among them, to 
Hugh’s great relief, Onny was not to be seen. 

And then they all went down together, 
losing the greater part of their escort on the 
way, and falling in with gentle Mrs. Treherne, 
who bade the young man welcome, then in- 
stantly disappeared at some urgent domestic 
call. 

The young folks crossed the road, passing 
through a gate in the railings that gave on to 
a square of emerald green turf and three sides 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


33 


of roses, all of the choicer kinds, and full of 
the warm breath of the summer that had 
evidently come to stay, after the good old- 
fashioned style. 

A few rocking-chairs were about, the 
formal place seemed, in its beautiful order, a 
marked contrast to the red-brick house oppo- 
site, out of which superabundant life seemed 
to flow at every window, and into whose in- 
terior, especially on the ground floor, those 
outside could look easily, seeing all that 
passed within. 

“Only think, Dosia,” said Hugh, when she 
had given him a rose, but without the look 
he wanted more than the rose, “ how easy 
for me to come here at night and peep at you 
— perhaps see you in the lamplight talking 
to some other man, for I am sure the blinds 
are never pulled down, by night or day. And 
it is a little dangerous, too, if anyone from 
outside bore someone in your house a grudge.” 

Dosia laughed. 

“We are an institution in the place,” she 
3 


34 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


said, “ as you will see when the House is up, 
and father comes down. Every woman 
ducks a courtesy, and every man touches his 
hat — I used to miss these tokens of respect 
very much when I first went to town.” 

“ But you got used to seeing people on 
their knees instead,” said Hugh drily; “you 
know there is compensation in everything!” 

“ Come and have some tea,” said Dosia ; 
“ you must want it. By the way, what time 
did you start from Regis — after lunch, of 
course ? ” 

Hugh coloured, but he looked the girl 
squarely in the face. 

“ No — before lunch.” 

“ Really ” 

Dosia raised her brows — dark, like her eye- 
lashes — and looked at him inquiringly. 

“ Then you must be frightfully hungry I ” 
she said. 

“ No ; I — I got something on the road.” 

Now what was there to hinder this young 
man from telling right out his small adven- 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER, 


35 


ture of the morning ? I know not, unless it 
be the rooted disinclination of a man to even 
mention one petticoat to another. 

“ I didn’t know there were any inns on the 
Landslip ! ” said Dosia, with a perceptible 
change in her voice, since she had not studied 
Hugh’s physiognomy and character for noth- 
ing, but he was unlatching the gate for her 
to pass out, and made no reply. 


36 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


CHAPTER III. 

Hey ninnie nonnie ! but love be bonnie 
A little while when it is new ; 

But when it’s auld, it grows mair cauld, 
And fades awa’ like morning dew.” 

“ Who is she? ” 

Mr. Bellew, putting the question across the 
breakfast- table to Hugh, found that young 
gentleman disingenuous when he inquired to 
whom the question referred. 

“ I said, ‘ Who is she ?,” repeated Mr. Bel- 
lew, and two pretty girls, just then slipping 
through the open windows on to the lawn, 
looked over their shoulders laughingly before 
they vanished. 

“Can’t one go over to Seamouth once in a 
way without getting chaffed ? ” said Hugh^ 
with some irritation. 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


S7 


“You have been over three times m one 
week,” said Mr. Bellew drily, “ and you are 
going over again to-day. During the previous 
years you have been here, a couple of visits 
sufficed.” 

“ Well } ” said Hugh, selecting a cigar 
carefully. 

“ I say who is she?” said the old gentleman 
testily, and getting up from the table. 

“ Christian name, Dosia ; surname, Tre- 
herne. A town young lady, whose father 
originally hailed from Cornwall.” 

“ I should think so. How could he come 
from anywhere else? And how he can live 
in that hole, London, beats me. Member for 
Mucklebury, isn’t he? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ And never visits anybody hereabouts. 
We’ve all tried to be .sociable with him, but 
he won’t. I gave up trying many years ago. 
Has over a hundred children, hasn’t he ? ” 

“ No — I don’t think I’ve seen more than 
twenty— and ’pon my word, I don’t think there 


38 


T'^ OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


can be so many as that, as Dosia is the eldest, 
and she is only eighteen.” 

“ H’m,” said Mr. Bellew, frowning, “ and 
it’s a settled thing ? ” 

“ Not till she settles it,” and Mr. Bellew 
looked quickly at the young man, for the tone 
was not exactly that of a prospectively jubilant 
and successful lover. 

His uncle nodded, looking out at the pleas- 
ant garden and the sunlit sea beyond. 

“ She is dark, of course ? ” he said, without 
turning. “ You see I know your taste.” 

“ No — as fair as I am.” 

“ What ! to act as extinguishers to one an- 
other ? If she values her appearance she’ll 
send you packing. My dear boy, in common 
justice to that magnificent skin and hair of 
yours, you should have selected a sooty-haired 
person, and she should have done the same; 
but probably she’ll marry you, and select him 
—afterl' added the old man cynically. 

“ Dosia is a good girl, sir,” said Hugh 
warmly ; “ she is more country than town- 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


39 


bred, or she would not be the wife for me.” 

“ What does a boy like you want with a 
wife } ” growled Mr. Bellew ; “ ten years hence 
would be time enough. Look at me ! ain’t I 
happy enough } And 1 never married.” 

“ No, sir. I have observed that if a man 
does manage to keep single till he is forty — 
all temptations and blandishments notwith- 
standing — he usually manages to be a bach- 
elor to the end.” 

“ Yes,” said Mr. Bellew, with a reminis- 
cent sigh, “ but it wants a good deal of pluck 
and determination to keep out of the toils, 
I promise you. Think it over seriously, my 
boy, and don’t be in a hurry; you’re both 
young, and there’s plenty of time. And if 
you find you’ve made a mistake, my boy,” 
he added, putting his hand affectionately on 
the young man’s shoulder, “ don’t be afraid 
to own it, and go back on your tracks — it’s 
far manlier than to blunder on, and spoil two 
lives. When a man finds he has made a mis- 
take in business', he doesn’t feel it his duty to 


40 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER, 


go on with it to ultimate ruin— he draws back, 
loses something, but not all ; and why, when 
its a case of life-long bankruptcy in happi- 
ness to two people, should it be a crime in 
either of them to change his mind ? ” 

Hugh flushed angrily, sensible though he 
was of his uncle’s good intentions. 

“ You must think me a cold lover enough, 
sir, to say that,” he said indignantly ; “ but it 

is not I who am hanging back — it is ” 

but he walked off without finishing the sen- 
tence, returning almost immediately to say 
good-bye before starting. 

“ How do you go ? ” said Mr. Bellew. 

It was the last day of July — a cloudless, 
royal summer day, promising great heat at 
noon — and Hugh looked up at the sky and 
down at the sea, as if undecided. A sailing- 
boat would slip round the cliff to Seamouth 
in no time ; a horse would carry him by the 
road well ahead of the midday heat ; yet, with- 
out any direct prompting of his will, Hugh 
said : 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


41 


“ r shall walk across the Slip.” 

Mr. Bellew shrugged his shoulders. 

“ Well, good-bye,” he said, “ make my 
respects to the young lady, and say I shall 
come over to see her when I hear Diogenes 
has arrived.” 

“ And I devoutly hope the young lady has 
changed her mind,” he thought, as he watched 
the stalwart figure down the road that 
wound outside the Cliff house to the town, 
“ anyway he doesn’t seem very keen about it 
— or rather her. Probably, now she has 
bagged her game, she has ceased to flatter 
him — and flattery’s sauce for the goose, sauce 
for the gander, and it’s flattery, not love, that 
makes the world go round. 


42 


T OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


CHAPTER IV. 

** Leave me not unto a Spaniard, 
You alone enjoy my heart ; 

I am lovely, young and tender, 
Love is likewise my desert.” 


It is an article of the average man’s creed, that 
when ruffled by one woman, he shall go to 
another for consolation, and possibly, though 
Hugh did not know it, he was only obeying 
his man’s nature, when, vaguely irritated by 
Dosia, he set out on his walk across the Land- 
slip, knowing that the little French girl lay 
directly in his path. 

When he had got well on his way, and clean 
out of sight of Regis, he began to walk more 
slowly, and to think closely and earnestly, try- 
ing to trace to its commencement the cloud' 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER, 


43 


that had come between him and Dosia. He 
had noticed a change in her that first evening 
at Seamouth, and in some slight, chill, intan- 
gible way, well-known to women who desire 
to keep their lovers in check and stem the 
flood-tide of their passion, she had gradually 
made herself remote and even inaccessible to 
him, so that he had felt shut out into the cold 
without knowing the reason why. 

And he had been too proud to brush that 
coldness by, to take her in his arms, to kiss 
her, even to threaten to shake her, if she 
would not tell him the reason why she had 
changed — why, from being the most spon- 
taneous, delightful companion in the world, 
she had become at once ge^iee and polite, an 
odious mixture of manners that did not be- 
come her in the least, and almost entirely 
deprived her of charm. 

For with Dosia the word and the act always 
went together, and in her likes and dislikes 
she knew no moderation, so that she had at 
least a dozen enemies for every friend she 


44 


T'OTHER HEAR CHARMER 


possessed ; but she was staunch, she was 
true, and, that rarest thing in a woman, con- 
stant where once her feelings were engaged. 

He had studied female nature too well not 
to know the value of such qualities, and if 
she were lovely too with the promise of a fair 
fresh spring morning, did such charming 
looks lessen her value, even though a man 
does not choose a wife for her complexion, but 
for her heart ; at least, if he be a man of the 
character of Hugh Valentine. And now she 
had changed, she had even brought Onny 
into the conspiracy of never leaving them 
alone together, but had apparently given him 
a special retainer never to quit her when in 
his company, so that the young man’s visits 
to Seamouth were failures, and resulted in 
much exacerbation of spirit and searching 
inquiry into the depths of his soul as to 
whether he had ever really loved the provok- 
ing creature at all. 

But a sight of Dosia, as he caught her one 
day romping with the boys, her April face, 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


45 


full of sunshine and goodness, as blithe and 
merry as the youngest of them all, made his 
heart beat fast, and convinced him that the 
dethroning of her would not be so easy a task 
as he had supposed. 

Nevertheless, when she continued the ways 
that he mentally characterised as “ aggravat- 
ing,” she tried his temper severely, almost to 
the point of giving her that shaking which 
she richly deserved, and would secretly have 
loved to get. 

He said to himself this morning that he 
would not stand any more nonsense, but have 
it out with her that very day, and if she were 
still “ aggravating,” then this should be his 
last — his very last walk to Seamouth this 
summer. 

And having settled this matter to his satis- 
faction, he covered the ground with so much 
vigour that almost before he knew himself 
near, beheld the stone wall, above which 
showed to-day no mere common Devonshire 
white rose, but, as he saw when he came 


46 


T'^ OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


nearer, a deep crimson one, freshly cut from 
its stalk, and looking as innocent as if one of 
Eve’s daughters had not put it expressly there 
for his temptation. 

He paused, and smiling, looked up; and 
at the moment a gay voice within commenced 
to sing a French chansonette ; 

“Tu t’en repentiras, Colin, 

Tu t’en repentiras 
Car si tu prends une femme, Colin, 

Tu t’en repentira.” 

He began to laugh softly, then checked 
himself and turned abruptly away, thinking, 
with a little pang, of her hospitality, and how 
he had promised to show her his sketches, 
paused, shook his head again, and walked 
determinedly away. But as he passed the 
little door in the wall, it opened suddenly as 
if of itself, and he saw the garden and empty 
summer-house, and yes, just a fold of white 
cambric beyond the door ; and what could a 
man do but step inside and look behind it ? 

“ Felida ! ” he exclaimed, at seeing her 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER, 


47 


squeezed into a mere nothing against the 
wall, and looking at him with soft, dark eyes 
of guilt, while with her apron she partly hid 
her face, “ what are you doing there ? ” 

“ I did steal the key,” she said, “ and I 
have come out, too, three times, and I did 
look up the way and down, but I did never 
see you anywheres -not never!” 

She shook her dark head reproachfully, 
and dropped her apron to let him take her 
little hand with the thimble on it, and he 
noticed what a useful, work-a-day thimble it 
was, by no means assumed for play. 

“ How did you get the key } ” he said 
severely, as she thought, and the colour faded 
a little in her olive cheeks as she stole out 
from behind the door. 

“ I did steal it from Celestine — and I do 
fear it was a wicked thought of my heart — 
out of her pocket while she was asleep, and 
I did put another in its place, and every 
morning she looks at them and nods her 
head — so — and does think I am all safe ; and 


48 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


she is lame — she stirs never from the coin 
du feui' she added, a little shamefacedly, “so 
she will not catch me ever.” 

“ And are you not afraid M. le Docteur 
will catch you ? ” said Hugh, coming in and 
shutting the door behind him. 

“No, it will be ten days yet before he can 
return — Celestine did say so. But where is 
your pictures 1 I have evq;* so much wished 
to see them.” 

“Over there,” said Hugh, with a jerk of 
his head towards Regis. “ I’ll bring them 
next time ” — he paused — “ some day,” he 
added abruptly. 

“ Will you not rest a little while? ” she said 
timidly, when they had reached the summer- 
house, and he sat down in the place where 
he had sat before, knowing well enough that 
duty lay on the other side of the wall, and 
that it was better to depart as a fool, than 
remain as a knave — to Dosia. 

“ Thank you,” he said, and remained, watch- 
ing her at her work. 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 49 

It was a change from the noise, the racket, 
the salt freshness that seemed always to blow 
through the Red House — and a sense of peace 
and rest came to him then that he had not 
known for days. 

Did not the suave, gracious personality of 
the young girl count for something, soothing 
the irritated man like a healing balsam on a 
rasped hurt ? * 

He did not know it, but her voice, her 
ways, the very look of her soft, winning eyes, 
rested him, and without analysing her charm 
he knew that she was adorable — and pro- 
bably only a man is aware of the full sig- 
nificance of that term when applied to a 
woman — and that she was as unconscious of 
her power as a child, and not even soit 
peu coquette. # 

Who was she, this dainty little workwoman, 
stitching away for dear life, far from her 
beloved Paris, and alone in this remote 
Devonshire eyrie ? He longed to know, yet 
as he slowly drank the cider she brought him, 
4 


50 


T OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


and they talked together, she let fall no word 
that could give him so much as a hint about 
herself. 

He set down a good deal of her reserve to 
the training of a young French girl, but he 
also soon came to the conclusion that Felida 
had a secret that she would guard very tena- 
ciously, as a woman will keep one that it is to 
her interest not to divulge. 

Whoever she was, she was simpatica, which 
is beyond being beautiful, or clever, or good, 
and is as a magic wand to the creature who 
possesses it, and with which she touches all 
hearts, touches, alas ! too often but to break 
them. 

What did these young people talk about 
on that superb July morning 

There was no scandal, no discussion of the 
daily papers, none of the paltry society talk, 
into which even Dosia’s tongue slipped too 
readily, and Hugh could hardly have told 
afterwards what had been the subjects o£ 
conversation between them. 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


51 


But he appreciated the quick comprehen- 
sion, the swift response of look and word, the 
intuitive good taste that avoided anything 
that could jar upon him, and the sweetness 
of a voice and temper that, for the time at 
least, breathed the very peace of Eden into 
his soul. 

But it was not long before he rose, drawing 
his limbs together with a certain resolution 
as he saw how the colour faded out of her 
olive cheeks — satin-smooth as such skins 
sometimes are — while the soft darkness af 
her eyes was suddenly dimmed, as if with 
pain. 

“ Do you go away — so soon ? ” she said 
wistfully. 

“Yes.” 

He had meant to say : 

“Good-bye, Felida, I shall not see you 
again,” but with the blundering tenderness of 
a man who shrinks from inflicting a small 
hurt in the present that will save a woman 
from a much worse one in the future, he did 


52 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


not say it, only held out his hand in silence. 

“ And you will come again — with the pic- 
tures ? ” she said, in a voice coaxing as a child 
who begs for sweetmeats. 

He hesitated, looking down at the mignonne 
face, then glanced at the lonely garden, 
thought of her forlornness, and was con- 
quered. 

“ I will come back — with the pictures,” he 
said, and went swiftly away, and for a long 
while the girl stood at the door, watching 
the ascending and descending and gradually 
diminishing figure in the distance. 


TOOTHER DEAR C//ARA/ER. 


53 


CHAPTER V. 

“The Gordian knot, 

Which true lovers knit 
Undo it you cannot, 

Nor yet break it/" 

“ Dosia ! ” said her mother. 

“ Yes, dear.” 

“ Mr. Valentine comes here very often.” 

“ Yes, mother.” 

“ Papa will be asking about it, you know, 
when he comes.” 

Dosia was playing with the youngest child, 
and did not seem to hear. 

“ Is there — is there anything between you ? ” 
Dosia set the baby on his legs, then moved 
to the big window and stood looking out on 
the pleasant garden at the back of the house, 
and the grove of trees on the hill beyond. 


54 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER, 


“ Mother,” she said at last, “ when you 
and — father — were — making — up your minds 
— about each other — you didn’t want to be — 
hurried — did you ? ” 

Mother considered, smiled a little, and 
said, “ No.” 

“And I don’t want to be hurried either, 
dear. Not for ever so long — perhaps not at 
all,” Dosia added, a little wildly, with a 
strange note in her voice that made Mrs. 
Treherne look at her anxiously, rousing the 
fierce mother-instinct in her at once, to shield 
her child from pain. 

For Mrs. Treherne was one of those 
women who are mothers first, and every- 
thing else after, whose very opinions are 
moulded by their children ; who live in 
them, and die for them, if necessary, but 
have no existence worth mentioning apart 
from them. 

“ Mr. Valentine has not been since Satur- 
day, and to-day is Wednesday,” said Mrs. 
Treherne, sitting erect, and with a sharp 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER, 


55 


flurry in her voice that made one think of 
an indignant hen about to revenge some 
injury to her chicks. 

“Yes,” said Dosia, turning round, “ and it 
won’t break my heart if it is Saturday again 
before he appears.” 

“ I believe he is an impertinent young 
man,” said Mrs. Treherne, with an air of 
having all her soft feathers ruffled. “ How- 
ever, papa will be here to-morrow, and ” 

“ Mother,” said Dosia, standing up very tall 
and straight before her, “ if you say one word 
to father about him. I’ll never forgive you. 
It will be time enough to worry father when 

, and that will be never,'" she added to 

herself, as she turned away. 

“Mr. Valentine’s here!” said Onny, 
bursting into the room as if shot from a cata- 
pult. “ Look here, Dosy, do you want me 
to play gooseberry this afternoon } ” This 
last in a stage whisper. 

“Of course! Where’s my hat. O! I’ve 
got it on ! Mother, I’ll take your gloves.” 


56 T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 

And she kissed Mrs. Treherne, and ran 
out of the room. 

“ How do you do ? ” her mother heard 
the girl say. “ I was just going out. Will 
you come too.^ And Onny, as I want him to 
bring something home for me. Vou can carry 
it ! O, no, thanks ! Is that my sunshade ? ” 

The mother went to the front of the house 
and looked out of the window to watch the 
handsome young pair down the street. 
They walked a little apart, and the man’s 
back had a distinct air of offence, but 
whether this was due to Onny’s persistently 
holding his hand in his own dirty one, and 
listening open-eared to every word he said, 
Mrs. Treherne was not able to determine. 

“ Did you ever see such fuchsias and myr- 
tles ? ” said Dosia, as they went along the 
picturesque street that straggled down to 
the sea. “ Do you know that they grow here 
in the open air all the year round ? ” 

Hugh stiffly expressed himself as previously 
unaware of that fact in botany, and conver- 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 57 

sation languished until the Boss came pelting 
after them, and by his gambols detached 
Onny temporarily from his post of observation. 

What a day to be happy in, and to love in ! 
What youth and health was theirs to be merry 
with, yet they walked glum as mutes, -with 
half a yard of dusty road between them ! 

They came out in front of the sea, from 
which blew continually the strong brisk wind 
that smacked of fish, and was declared to be 
the healthiest along all the coast, looked at 
the bodies that strewed the shingle, and at the 
bathers in the middle distance, glanced at the 
gingerbread castle that crowned the hill on 
the right, then turned and went along the 
gravelled walk that bordered the beach, and 
ended in the shallow, sluggish river, beyond 
which was a cliff surmounted by a flagstaff. 

Onny accompanied them closely, riding on 
Hugh’s stick, and doing his best to break it. 

“ Only think,” she said, “ I climbed right 
up to the top yesterday, and it is so pretty 
there. I had more than half a mind to walk 
to Regis.” 


58 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER, 


How he hated that pleasant formal tone 
without a note of human nature — of Dosia’s 
nature — in it, so he answered her in the same 
cold way, and hoped that her exertions had 
done her no harm. 

Dosia laughed. 

“ I can walk ten miles at a stretch easily,” 
she said, “ and even got to the top of Golden 
Cap Hill once. And it is six hundred feet 
high.” 

“ Take me there some day,” he said, “ and 
I will see if I can climb it too.” 

“It is ever so far from here,” she said, 
shaking her head ;• “ do you know your Regis 
well ? ” she added quickly. “ I was hearing 
such a droll tale about it the other day, that 
I never heard before.” 

“ Tell it me,” he said absently, for he was 
listening for the snap of his stick. 

“ Oh ! it is nothing much — only an asser- 
tion of womens rights, as long ago as 1651.” 

“ They began with Eve,” said Hugh smil- 
ing. 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


59 


“ Well, this is how it happened,” said Dosia, 
trying not to smile too. “ Charles II., during 
the Civil War, was to make an attempt to 
leave this country for France, and a par- 
ticular part of Charmouth Beach was selected 
as the place of embarkation, and a vessel be- 
longing to a trustworthy Lyme man, named 
Stephen Limbey, was engaged for the pur- 
pose. The king in disguise, with Mrs. Ju- 
liana Conningsbury, a member of the Wynd- 
ham family, seated behind him on a pillion 
to disarm suspicion, arrived in due course at 
the inn, where a room had been engaged, and 
soon after, Limbey appeared and reported 
his arrangements all complete and that he 
should be ready with his vessel at the time and 
place appointed. He then went back to 
Lyme to take leave of his wife, whom he had 
previously made acquainted of his engage- 
ment.” 

“ Very foolish of him,” said Hugh. 

“ And pray, sir,” said Dosia, facing round 
and showing an indignant face beneath her 


6o 


T OTHER DEAR CHARMER, 


smart straw hat, “ do you suppose a woman 
can never hold her tongue if she pleases ? ” 

“ O ! yes, she can ,” said Hugh with great 
bitterness. “ She can sometimes refuse to 
say either yes or no, and keep a man shilly- 
shallying while she hesitates which mono- 
syllable to use.” 

“ Well,” continued Dosia, in a considerably 
raised voice. “ he must have been very fond 
of his wife.'’ 

“ And very trustful,” said Hugh sardon- 
ically. 

“ And evidently she was very fond of /iim, 
for what does she do but beguile him into a 
room and proceed to lock him up ! The 
proclamation for apprehending the king was 
out. She had no mind to let her husband be 
involved in so dangerous an enterprise, and 
hard as he begged and prayed to be released, 
telling her that at midnight the king and 
all his party would be awaiting him on Char- 
mouth shore, she wouldn’t budge an inch.” 

“ Probably played the piano to drive him 
mad,” said Hugh unkindly. 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER, 


6l 


“ So after the poor king had waited for 
hours with his attendants ” 

“ Which the conversation must have been 
decidedly sulphurous,” cut in Hugh. 

“ It was decided to return to Trent without 
delay, which they did early next morning,” 
concluded Dosia, with a sudden burst of 
glee. 

That bright laugh, the natural voice and 
manner into which she had gradually slipped, 
acted like magic on Hugh, and when, as they 
came to the ferry, with its tub of a boat and 
its sleepy Charon, he looked quickly round, 
Onny and the Boss were rolling over each 
other in transports on the sand, the broken 
pieces of stick not far off. For the moment, 
at least, Dosia was unchaperoned. 

“ Jump in,” he said smartly to Dosia, and 
half lifting her to the boat as he spoke. 

Taken by surprise, she made no resistance, 
and in a moment the shore, with Onny rac- 
ing to fulfil his neglected duties, was reced- 
ing rapidly from them, and turning simul- 


62 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


taneously the eyes of Hugh and Dosia met 
in a swift, sudden look, that changed in a 
breath to passion in his, and in hers to one 
of those old half-shy, wholly-sweet regards 
that had once made a summer warmth about 
his heart, and told him how inexpressibly dear 
she was to him. 

He clasped her hand, and so without a 
word they drifted across the sluggish stream, 
and when they had reached the other side, 
kept silently on till they reached the little 
gate at the foot of the path all overarched 
with trees that led up the hill to the 
cliffs. 

Love surely could wish no fairer path to 
climb than this, and as Hugh closed the gate, 
Dosia thought that God indeed had been very 
good to her, and rewarded instead of punish- 
ing her for her wayward spirit. 

“ Dosia ! ” cried the young man, holding 
out eager arms to her, “come to me, 
love ! ” 

She had retreated as he advanced, but now 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


63 


as he stopped she stole back, and not raising 
her eyes to his face, lifted both hands to lay 
them on his breast, when she saw, right across 
the white flannel, a single black, fine, silken 
woman’s hair. 


64 


T OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


CHAPTER VI. 

** O Lorde, what is this world’s blisse 
That changeth as the mone, 

My somer’s day in lusty May 
Is darked before the none,” 

Explanations are odious, and Hugh Valen- 
tine would not explain, would not even sug- 
gest any possible means by which the flagi- 
tious testimony could have drifted on to his 
innocent breast, and having made that first 
and gigantic mistake, stuck to it like grim 
death, with all the perversity of a truly honest 
and thorough man. 

Her anger, her entreaties even, could not 
move him from his position that he loved 
her, but how that hair came to repose above 
the region of his heart he couldn’t and 


T'^ OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 65 

wouldn’t explain. The glorious green arch 
of the trees looked down on the jangle, and 
perchance pitied the fretting ephemeral crea- 
tures below, but to Dosia this loveliness that 
was to have given an added beauty to love, 
lent her an additional pang, and the most 
horrible hour of her life was ever afterwards 
associated in her mind with a steep woodland 
path. 

Then at last all patience deserted her, she 
told him how she scorned such love as his, 
that was one woman’s yesterday and might 
be another’s to-morrow ; how she had no 
mind to assist at a marriage service in which 
the word “one woman” should be omitted, 
and that of “ every woman ” put in its place. 

“ Yes,” she said, undaunted by the horror 
in Hugh’s face, horror and stern condem- 
nation, too, “it is brutal, it is unwomanly 
to speak so — I know it — but I must speak 
out now, once and for all. I could not live 
the life .that most women live — my husband 
must be mine, mine absolutely, or I will not 
5 


66 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


have him at all. They say life is made up of 
compromises, but mine, in matters of love, 
never could be, and never shall.” 

And she had opened the gate, before he 
knew of her intention, and sped quickly 
away. 

Hugh made no attempt to follow her, but 
sat down under a tree to do half an hour of 
bitter reckoning with himself. He had been 
angry with Dosia, chilled by her coldness, 
disgusted by her capriciousness, irritated to 
the point of resolving to leave her without 
waiting for that promised answer to his 
question, yet, lo ! the first sign of naturalness 
in her, a single sweet look from her eyes had 
brought him to her feet, and in that brief 
passage across the ferry he had realized that 
her mutability, her caprice, had lain but as 
froth above the steadfastness of a character 
and a love upon which a man might most 
surely and safely rely. 

And because he had been angry with Dosia, 
because he had not been able to bear his pain 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 67 

without soothing, he had gone to a gentle 
little, soul who gave him kindest welcome, and 
who had made an oasis in the wilderness of 
his unprofitable thoughts and desires, without 
his considering in the least what sort of good 
he might be doing Aer. 

His visits to the girl had been a disloyalty 
to Dosia, he had felt that from the beginning, 
yet he had persisted in them, and now, as if 
to illustrate the eternal truth that one’s sin is 
sure to find one out, he had been found out, 
and ignominiously found out, by the woman 
he most devotedly loved. 

How came that fatal token of Felida across 
his breast ? She had been looking over his 
shoulder while he sketched, or the breeze 
had blown it towards him as they sat side by 
side, she with her needle-work, and he with 
his pipe and work, happy and rejoicing in 
their happiness like the two truants that they 
were in thought and deed. 

It had been the doctor whom they had 
feared as the avenging schoolmaster, but dis- 


68 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


covery had come from a different quarter, and 
in a totally unexpected manner. 

And he had been a cowatd on first inten- 
tion, and deliberately afterwards, when he 
mieht have saved himself and said what was 
really the truth, that the little brown P'ronch 
girl and he were comrades, and comrades 
only, who had together enjoyed “a.good time” 
as the children say. 

They had been distant and they had been 
friendly. She had fed him out of her daily 
portion, and he her out of his occasional 
wallet; they had talked together, laughed to- 
gether, even frolicked together after a fashion ; 
and if they had sometimes squabbled together, 
had managed to become friends again with- 
out any of that dangerous kissing again with 
tears of which we have all heard. He had 
found her bon camarade\x\ the truest sense of 
the word, and an uncommonly smart critic, 
too, of his sketches, for Felida was one of 
those born judges who know what is good, 
though not in the least why. So her criti- 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 69 

cisms, if impertinent, were always just, and 
he actually found himself improving beneath 
her merciless but kindly eye. And while he 
painted, she worked, and they talked contin- 
ually. He found her a delightful companion, 
one who banished time, and who was never 
dull, or long enough in any one mood to 
weary him ; she had, too, that capacity for 
extracting pleasure out of the merest trifles 
that makes the possessor a ray of sunshine 
to all whom she may chance to meet, and in 
this particular greatly resembled Dosia in her 
natural self. 

And yet it had often struck him as curious 
how entirely she lived and revelled in the 
present. Candid as she appeared, quick and 
transparent as were her thoughts, she never 
alluded to the past, or gave the slightest clue 
to what that past might be. 

Once, indeed, she had called him “ Felix,” 
and blushed guiltily at a slip which he had 
affected not to observe, but it had set him 
thinking, and often he longed to question her, 
but forbore. 


70 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


He did not even know her surname. She 
was Felida, that was all, but he had quick 
eyes ; and if her French air, her pretty accent, 
made all that she did seem graceful, he noted 
that her forefinger showed signs of work, 
and she loved work, and was quicker at it 
than a lady would be who has otliers to sew 
for her, so that long ago he had come to the 
conclusion that Felida had been bred a cou- 
turiere, and that even now, when she might 
be idle, she loved to follow her trade still. 

Out of his life, out of his set, why then had 
he felt a curious shrinking and trembling of 
the heart as the moment drew near to say 
farewell, as if she had crept into some corner 
of it, and he could not bear to thrust her out 
of it ? To be sure she had shown no signs 
of inconvenient fondness for him, or more 
pleasure in his company than that of good 
comradeship, and he had been inwardly thank- 
ful for this, though, man -like, he wished her 
to be sorry, very sorry, when he went away. 

She should never know how much she had 


2^ OTHER DEAR CHARMER, 


71 


cost him ; he owed her at least as much as 
that, this gentle young person who had made 
him contented when he was so miserable, 
and who had separated him from the proudest, 
purest, most worshipful woman he had ever 
known. 

Well, he would go away, butfirst he would 
bid Felida good-bye, and when Dosia could 
bring herself to call him back first, and hear 
his explanation afterwards — then he would 
come back, indeed, on the wings of the wind. 

And then, as the afternoon shadows grew 
longer, all the peace and loveliness of his 
surroundings smote painfully on his heart, as 
awhile ago they had done on Dosia’s, and he 
struck his foot in anger against the ground, 
thinking of the golden hours that had been 
theirs to squander, and which they had put to 
such lamentable use. 


72 


T OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


CHAPTER VII. 

It standelh so; a deed is do 
Whereof. moche harm shall grow.” 

Dosia had rushed away, not knowing how 
she was going to get back across the river, 
only over the ferry she would not go just yet, 
and she wanted some place in which to hide, 
to hide from herself as much as Hugh, then 
with all a woman’s inconsistency blamed him 
for not following, even while she dreaded 
pursuit. 

So it was true, she »aid to herself, walking 
on and on, forgetting even to put up her white 
umbrella between herself and the sun. She- 
had felt all along that something more than 
her own waywardness had come between 
them, and now she knew. 

Since when had she been so sensitive to him 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


n 


that the mere shadow of another woman thrown 
upon his heart had become instantly apparent 
to her, and so revolted her fastidious taste as to 
make her shy away from him ? 

All through that long day in which he had 
tarried on his way to her — and in what haste 
had he been to hurry to her from Town ! — 
she had instinctively foreboded evil, and his 
explanations, when he did arrive, were so 
lame and unsatisfactory as to bring her pride 
up in arms — where it had remained more or 
less ever since. And she had let herself be 
stripped of it at a word, a look, from the man 
who found it child's play to deceive her, and, 
like the mantle brought into King Arthur’s 
court it had shrivelled around her, and left 
her bare to her own and his contempt. 

“ I was over ready,” she said, as she followed 
the bank, below whfch in the low mud were 
lying the skeleton cuttle-fish in which her 
young brothers’ souls delighted. “ I doubted 
him, yet I was ready to fall into his arms — and 
should be there now but for that — black — hair. 


74 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


Black ! He always admired dark women, 
just as I admired dark men. What folly to 
think one’s will override constitutional 
taste! It will be a wrench — but I’ll get over 
it O! I’ll get over it! Can it be one of 
those girls staying with his uncle } No — 
they are both fair — he told me so. Let me 
think. He has been sketching a great deal 
lately — he has brought his tools and sketches 
over several times, and they are all - yes, now 
I have it- -they are all bits and views of the 
Landslip. If she were a Regis girl, he would 
be spending his time with her in the town, 
and he couldn’t combine his family life in the 
Bellew House, his sketches, his visits to me” 
(her short, rosy lip curled) “ and the fashion- 
able Regis girl too. It is some one who ac- 
companies him when he goes sketching.” 

Dosia sat down on the bank to think, and 
now recovered sufficiently to put up her urn- 
brella. 

“ I noticed one day, in a corner of one of 
his sketches, an etching of a girl’s head — 


T\OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


75 


pure black and white — evidently the natural 
colours of the head sketched.” 

She paused to stretch out a dainty bare 
hand, pink-palmed, with delicate wrist veined 
in blue, and scowled at it, as if its apple- 
blossom tints were nauseating. 

“How can you blame him ?” she said. 
“ And that hair was as silky and fine as mine 

is wavy and rough ^ 

She drew a deep breath. 

“ ril find out,” she said aloud, “ by hook or 
by crook I’ll find out. Where he meets her. 
What she is like. If he is fooling her as he 
has fooled me. If she is as unwomanly and 
uses as disgraceful language as I do — but I 
don’t think that's possible. I wonder where 
he has gone } But he won’t dare to come 
near me again. To pretend to love me, and 
philander with another woman ! That’s a 
man all over — but I thought he was different, 
ril die single. Who is that little fat man 
waving to me on the opposite bank } Good 
heavens — it’s father ! ” 


76 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


CHAPTER VIII. 

** Whatsoe’er befalle, I never shal 
Of this thing you upbraid : 

But yf ye go, and leve me so, 

^hen have ye me betraied.” 

Colonel Treherne sitting at breakfast in 
the bosom of his family that glorious August 
morning, was, and looked, as happy a man as 
a father can possibly be. 

Those bright-faced, curly-headed boys and 
girls, with which the table seemed literally to 
brim over, all looking eagerly and affectionately 
towards him, made a noble reward for the 
many sacrifices he went through on their 
account, but in the midst of all the cheerful 
bustle and laughter, one little pang made itself 
felt in his breast, and that was when he looked 
at his eldest and best beloved child, Dosia. . 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 77 

He had already heard .a little, and Dosia’s 
face, pale for all its smiles (and if one wished 
to know how sweet and truly lovable Dosia 
could be, one must see her in the post of elder 
sister to these unruly young people, who at 
once tyrannised over and adored her), told him 
much. 

Could any father see his child drift away 
from the haven of home into a strange port 
without a contraction of the heart and a 
certain fear ? 

But meanwhile the sun was shining, the 
salt smell of the sea (though out of sight) came 
invigoratingly through the windows, and break- 
fast — the best meal of the day to a really healthy 
human animal — was there to discuss, so Col- 
onel Treherne gave himself up to enjoyment 
in the midst of a babel of tongues that a stran- 
ger would have found simply deafening. 

These were the holidays, and the governess 
had no more onerous duties than to prevent 
her charges drowning' themselves or damag- 
ing each other with spade and bucket, for rows 


78 


T OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


between these sturdy youngsters were of 
wholesome and frequent occurrence, alarmed 
nobody and did no harm. 

Mrs. Treherne, who at forty years of age wore 
a bit of lace on her head, matronly gowns, and 
walked abroad in a bonnet instead of a hat, was 
a lovely woman still, and probably a good deal 
happier than she had been at Dosia’s age, as 
indeed she was just then thinking as she poured 
out the tea. 

She knew instinctively that things had gone 
“ aMee” with the s^irl, who had indeed said 
nothing to her, only walked about her room 
all night. 

But it takes more than a night or two of 
pain to dim the freshness of eighteen years, 
and even Onny’s sharp eyes did not detect 
anything amiss. 

Nevertheless he bore her a grudge for giving 
him the slip the day before, giving her some 
knowing nods and winks from time to time 
that she could not openly resent, and so pre- 
tended not to see. 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


79 


She was racking her brains to think of how 
she could get away from the house for three 
or four clear hours — perhaps longer — and at 
the very time in the day, too, when she would 
be most missed, and her absence remarked 
upon. 

For by strenuous thought, and following 
one clue and another, she had arrived at a 
conclusion as to about the hour when Hugh 
was likely to be in the company of his black- 
haired friend. And that hour, midway be- 
tween his leaving Regis after breakfast, and 
arriving at Seamouth in the early afternoon, 
would be somewhere about noon. — 

But go she must and would, even if she 
had afterwards to confess to her unmaidenly 
quest. She was not a woman to spy upon a 
man, but she felt she must get to the bottom 
of this, and it was a matter of life and death 
to her, and she would know what there was 
to know, and be done with it. She knew 
herself, and that the man who put her wrong 
in love would put her wrong for life, if she 


8o 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


did not bring her whole strength to grapple 
with the difficulty, and settle it one way or 
the other forever. 

But even while she was thinking how she 
could escape, before -being bidden by her 
father to her usual walk with him, he said to 
his wife : 

“We will start for Exeter by the 11.15, 
Charlotte, then we shall arrive in comfortable 
time for lunch.” 

“ What are you going to do in Exeter, 
father .? ” said Dosia, trying to keep the rush 
of relief out of her voice, while Onny looked 
at her triumphantly, with anticipations of a 
long day in which he would play detective. 

Colonel Treherne laughed, but did not ex- 
plain, not even when Dosia came behind him, 
and coaxed her cheek to his. 

“ It’s too bad, my first day at home,” he 
said, “ but no more dissipations after this — 
when I am at home, I like to stay there.” 

The younger children had already tumbled 
over each other out of the room, and the next 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


8l 


moment, with pinafores torn off, and hats and 
sun-bonnets flung on askew, were seen in the 
road, rushing pell-mell to the sea. 

Only Onny remained, with an expression 
in his blue eye that made Dosia tremble. 
And, indeed, when Colonel and Mrs. Tre- 
herne had departed, and the coast was per- 
fectly clear, Onny, who had never let her out 
of his sight since breakfast, stuck to her with 
a tenacity and determination that she tried 
to combat in vain, for now his parents were 
gone, he evidently felt his responsibility 
doubly great. 

On messages to tradespeople he would not 
go ; to even a visit to the confectioner’s, with 
cash in his pocket, he hardened his heart, 
and was proof against the offer of a long ride 
inland on a donkey, for dearer than all these 
things to Onny was the gratification of that 
detective instinct which was located so oddly 
in his otherwise childish mind. 

The simplest way would have been to take 

her small tormentor with her, but this would 
6 


82 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


have entailed the risk of discovery by Hugh, 
as his shrill little voice carried far, and might 
give warning of their approach. 

So, when time was slipping away, and still 
Onny, having accompanied her to the ferry, 
gripped her hand with his small dirty one, 
she resolved to make an appeal to his young 
six-year-old honour, and stooping down to 
look very earnestly in his eyes, she said : 

“ Onny, I’m going to tell you a secret. Will 
you promise me to keep it-— just like a 
man ? ” 

“ What is it ? said Onny cautiously, but 
much flattered nevertheless. 

“ I am going across the ferry — over there 
— to meet — to meet Mr. Valentine.” 

An absurd little gleam of propriety flashed 
suddenly into Onny’s blue eyes, and he said : 

“ I ^/im^ I’d better come too.” 

“ No, not to-day. And it’s a secret, 
Onny, quite a secret — you understand ? ” 

“ Y — e — s,” said Onny, “ but I didn’t 
promise, Dosy, you know.” 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER. 83 

No, but it’s all the same,” said Dosia, as 
Charon saluted her. “ Here is half-a-crown 
for you ; don’t spend it all at once,” and 
Dosia got quickly into the boat before the 
boy had recovered from his amazement at 
possessing so much money. 

But his mind was troubled, and he called 
out : 

“ 1 shall come to fetch you, Dosy, if you’re 
very long ! ” 

To which Dosia replied, with much en- 
ergy and raised voice : 

“ And if you do, Onny, you’ll be a sneak, 
and not a man at all.” 

Whereupon Onny curled himself up on the 
bank, and after meditating until he had seen 
her walk along the opposite side, uplifting a 
warning finger to him before she vanished, 
he finally decided, though much against the 
grain, to be a “ man,” and departed for con- 
solation to the toffee-shop. Dosia stopped 
abruptly inside the gate, just where she and 
Hugh had stood together, and she turned 


84 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


sick, and covered her eyes with her hand, 
thinking, that miserable as she was, she 
would perhaps be more miserable yet when 
she should again, in a few hours’ time, be 
standing on this spot. 

The way was steep, and she did not linger, 
for this was not the enchanted way, all over- 
arched with green and gold, that love, with 
love for company, had once been promised to 
her, and soon she was on the high undulat- 
ing ground at the summit of the cliff, with 
the fresh wind blowing about her, and the 
sun, as he rode high in the heavens, smiting 
her hard. 

But she was in capital condition, and, like 
all good walkers, loved the exercise, and looked 
her best while practising it. The goddess of 
health herself never wore brighter, more beau- 
tiful mien than did Dosia in her white gown 
and hat, going over rough and even alike at 
a pace that many a man would have found it 
hard to follow. 

“ It will be somewhere about mid- way be- 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER. 85 

tween Regis and Seamoutb,” she had said 
to herself, and she was right. 

She was not at all tired, and had only an 
additional tint of rose in her cheeks, when 
she spied in the distance the chimney of a 
little house (and there was more than one 
humble dwelling on the Landslip) surrounded 
by a perfectly new wall — a wall that had not 
been there the year before, when she had 
come this way with her father. 

The house lay in a partial hollow, and she 
was herself at that moment on higher ground, 
but as she approached nearer, keeping as close 
as possible to the back of the cliff, she half 
uttered an exclamation, for a good way be- 
low, with their backs to the open door in the 
wall, sat a young pair in the sun ; the man 
sketching, the girl working, and to all ap- 
pearance perfectly happy in each other’s 
company. 

Dosia drew in her breath sharply, and 
clenched both hands above her furiously- 
beating heart, as if it must break in pieces 


86 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER 


did she not hold it so, while she gazed at the 
little smooth, dark head that leaned so con- 
fidingly towards Hugh’s fair curly one. 

The white folded kerchief showed a bit of 
soft olive skin, and the graceful shape of the 
girl’s neck; the little figure, too, was very 
slight, and the clothes on it so dien mise as to 
announce her at once as a Frenchwoman. 

“ A little soft, brown mouse,'’ thought 
Dosia, jealously, “ with pretty, winning ways 
— as every gesture tells — not much spirit, but 
then no counter-balancing temper — suave, 
gracious, will let him talk about himself, and 
exact next to nothing — the sort of woman 
who creeps into a man’s heart — and stays 
there. Some men will have it so — they are 
to give, the woman is to receive — it flatters 
their self-love, and they are kindly savages 
though they often develop into unkindly 
ones under their wives’ ruinous indulgence.” 

She paused to stamp her foot on the soft 
turf in a paroxysm of fury and wounded 
pride. 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER, 87 

“ How dare he — how dare he !” she said 
breathlessly, nearly swept out of herself into 
stepping down to them there and then ; 
but the thought of the vulgarity of the in- 
evit able scene sharply pulled her back and 
stayed her, and luck favoured her inasmuch 
that neither he nor she turned and saw her. 

A person in the foreground, looking at the 
pair in the middle distance, and at the girl 
beyond, must at once have hit the difference 
there was between the two women. 

The one, however charming and graceful 
she might be, was a couturierehorn and bred ; 
the girl in her simple white gown, a gentle- 
woman to her finger tips, and of the same 
order of society as that to which the man, 
sketching so contentedly, unmistakably be- 
longed. And sweet looked Dosia, for all her 
wildness, and the dumb, helpless agony of 
jealousy and pain that only her will kept at 
bay, ’but which would overwhelm her in fullest 
flood by and bye . . . 

Well, she had stooped her pride to come 


88 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


here to find out the truth, and she had found 
it, and how much the better was she for 
knowing it now ? Presently- she would go 
home, to digest her knowledge at leisure. . . . 

She could hear the murmur of their voices, 
but was too far off to distinguish what they 
said. How blessedly happy and contented 
looked their backs, and very thorough, evi- 
dently, was the cordial understanding between 
them ! He talked while she listened, and 
both were satisfied, and, indeed, made a 
delightful contrast as they sat together. 

Dosia turned, and had scarcely gone many 
yards, being, in fact, behind one of those 
clumps of trees or thickets with which the 
Slip abounded, when the sound of Hugh’s 
voice coming towards her told that they 
had risen. Drawing herself still further into 
the shade, she soon heard them laughing as 
they climbed the ascent, and even caught a 
glimpse of Felida as she went quickly through 
the door in the wall, turning her head as she 
went. 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER. 89 

Hugh followed more slowly, carrying his 
belongings, and his step was lagging, and his 
face downcast, Dosia thought. 

He left the door half open, and Dosia 
stood still, longing, with all the strength of her 
body and soul, to look inside it . . . but they 
would see her to a certainty — and to be a spy 
is one thing, and to be caught, another. 


90 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


CHAPTER IX. 

‘*But fare ye weel, my ae fause love, 

That I have loved sae lang ; 

It sets ye choose another love, 

And let young Benjie gang.” 

“ I HAVE come to wish you good-bye, Felida.” 
That is what Hugh Valentine had come to 
say two hours ago, and he had not said it yet. 

It had been a happy little time, and one for 
which the piper had to be paid heavily, thought 
Hugh Valentine, as he looked at her sitting 
on the other side of the little table, all her 
tools for work laid out before her, and, for a 
wonder, silent, a little pout on her lips, as if 
she were deep in thought. 

“ What were you thinking about, Felida } ” 
he said at last, the words he had really in- 
tended to say failing him. 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER. 9 1 

“ I did think,” she said rather sadly, “ how 
joyous were the hours I have spent with you 
outside that wicked wall.” 

“ But I made a little thief of you,” said 
Hugh ; “ and who shall say where your thiev- 
ing will end ? ” 

“But I did only change one key for 
another,” said Felida, looking at him earnestly, 
“ and as she never does use it, where is the 
harm } M. le Docteur did store the place 
well before he did go away. And it was 
sweet to look at the sea,” she went on, her 
wistful eyes seeming to pierce the envious 
wall. 

“ But if you do not like it, why do you stay 
here } ” he said. 

But she only blushed, putting the question 
by as she did all others that ever so faintly 
savoured of curiosity, and the reason of her 
presence here. 

There fell a little silence between them, in 
which a light breeze sprang up, for it was 
verging towards evening. He knew that it 


92 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


would be as hard or harder to speak in an 
hour’s time as it was then. 

“ Felida,” he said, valiantly, at last, and 
something in his voice made her put her work 
down, while her colour faded, “ we have had a 
jolly little time together here, have we not } ” 

“ Yes, Mr. Hugh,” she said, with a catch 
in her breath ; “ it has been one long summer 
day since you did put your thiefy hand over 
the wall to steal the rose.” 

Her dark eyes rested on the fair head, just 
then bent, as if she loved its sunshine too ; 
but Hugh, looking up, felt her eyes hurt him, 
and he spoke quickly to get the pain over. 

“ Felida,” he said, “ I am going away to- 
day. I have come to say good-bye.” 

She was threading her needle as he spoke, 
but the eye jumped from the cotton, and she 
started up as if to seek the brighter light out- 
side. But he caught her hand as she passed 
him in the narrow space and looked up in 
her face. 

Felida’s expression was one of bewildered 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


93 


distress and pain, then her chin dropped 
heavily on her breast, her eyes closed, and 
she seemed on the point of falling, when Hugh 
put out his arm to save her, and with bowed 
head she sank gently into his arms. 

So absolutely still she rested that he 
thought her in a dead faint ; but no, her colour 
remained, her breath came gently and evenly, 
she was only profoundly asleep. The slight, 
pliant figure rested confidently in the shelter 
of his arm as a child, the pretty head, over- 
weighted with slumber, nestled softly into his 
sunburned neck, and no more perfect picture 
of domestic peace and security could well be 
presented than this young pair to the eyes 
of Dosia, whose blonde head stole round the 
doorway, remaining long enough for detec- 
tation had Hugh’s eyes been turned that 
way. Was that a sob or sigh he heard, as of 
some sorely-wounded fleeing thing ? 

So swiftly indeed fled Dosia that she did 
not even see advancing from the Regis side 
a young man who wore the dress of a French 


94 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


sea-captain, and who was hastening towards 
the very place from which she was running 
headlong away. 

Hurrying joy ran riot in his face and bear- 
ing as he pushed wider the partly open postern 
door, such joy as fills a man who finds himself 
at his journey’s end, and within measurable dis_ 
tance of his heart’s desire, and he had advanced 
several steps before he caught sight of the two 
beautiful young figures in their attitude of rest, 
the blonde and the brown head leaning together 
as in perfect trustfulness and love. 

Seeing them, the man stood still, a human, 
passionate being struck to stone, every faculty 
arrested in him save sight ; but this could not 
last, and his senses returned to him with a 
violence that threatened madness. Mad, 
indeed, for the time he was, and quite irrespon- 
sible as he dashed forward, and with the speed 
of lightning, and almost before Hugh had 
realised the intrusion, tore the sleeping girl 
from Hugh’s knee, then held her at arm’s 
length, with that in his face which might 


T OTHER DEAR CHAR 


95 


have killed a timid woman outright with fear. 

Heavy with sleep her eyes opened upon him, 
but without fear. Neither recognition, nor 
anything but a perfectly natural astonishment 
appeared in their awakening ; then she frowned 
trying to free herself from the man’s rude 
grasp, looking involuntarily to Hugh for assist- 
ance. 

“ Sir,” she said, in French, speaking as 
though to a stranger, and with the distant, court- 
eous look in her eyes one gives to strangers, 
“ this man is hurting me. Will you not beg of 
him that he will release me } ” 

The man let her go as suddenly as if she 
had broken the arms that held her. 

“ Oh, my God,” he cried in French, “you 
call me ‘ this man.’ Am I not your husband, 
Felida.?” 

“ My husband ! ” She looked at him with 
wide, incredulous eyes, innocent as heaven. 
“ I have no husband. I did not ever see you 
before in my life — never!''' 

The man gave one great deep gasp, eyes 


96 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


and lips parted in a stupid stare. He seemed 
incapable of speech, incapable of movement 
and at that moment a great dog came bound- 
ing up the path, and seeing Felida made 
straight for her, covering her with caresses. 

She thrust him from her with a look of dis- 
gust. 

“Oh, sir! take him away,” she cried to 
Hugh. “ I do hate strange dogs, and he will 
bite me.” 

“ What ! ” cried the stranger, “ you don’t 
even remember the poor dog whom you fon- 
dled and fed ? Good God 1 you must be mad 
— or am I ” 

He dashed his hand across his brow, looked 
suspiciously around him, as if doubting what 
he saw to be real, or only figments of the brain, 
then cried in a heartbroken voice : 

“ I’m not mad, nor you either. I’m only 
betrayed. I left you at home, safe, as I 
thought ; I returned to find you gone — spirited 
away by some French doctor, and I find you 
after long search clasped in the arms of an- 


97 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


other man ! Shame on you ! ” he cried in a 
terrible voice of condemnation, more convinc- 
ing than any wrath, “ shame on you, I say, 
woman, and less than woman ! ” 

Tears rose to Felida’s eyes — if indeed she 
were less than woman she could not but be 
moved by this man’s despair, and she made 
a gesture of sorrow, of pity, as she said 
gently : 

“ My friend, you are mistaken by some 
fancied resemblance, for indeed I am not your 
wife. As I said before, I have never seen you 
until to-day.” 

He uttered a wild, fierce ejaculation and 
strode to her, snatching her pretty hand 
roughly, and holding if out, palm upper- 
most. 

“ See here,” he cried, with forced calmness, 
“ here is the mark of the wedding-ring that I, 
Felix Le Feuvre, placed on your finger two 
months ago in the parish church of Au- 
vergne, before all the members of your family 
and of mine. But the ring is gone ; perhaps” 
7 


98 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


(and he turned on Hugh with the ferocity of a 
tiger) “ monsieur is taking charge of it for 
you ? ” 

He paused, faltered, the mere touch of her 
hand acting on him like a charm. His face 
softened, then lit up as at a happy thought. 

“Can it be that you are ill, Felida.^” he 
said, entreatingly. “ They told me that you 
were delicate ‘ strange, sometimes,’ they 
said — but if you are mad, Felida, and have 
forgotten, I will nurse and bring you back to 
health. Indeed, indeed, you must be mad, 
Felida, to be so wicked.” 

Felida’s mood had changed. She snatched 
her hand away angrily. 

“ I never did wear a wedding-ring,” she 
said petulantly. “ Why do you come here to 
disturb me when I am so happy ? ” and she 
turned from him to Hugh as to her natural 
protector and laughed, whether from pure 
nervousness, or prompted by the devil, who 
shall say? 

The laugh jarred on Hugh. She was 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


99 


in the midst of a tragedy, and she did not 
know it. Tearless, white, convulsed with 
something just born in his eyes growing 
swiftly to a giant’s strength, the man she had 
denied looked at the laughing, unthinking 
girl, till with a spring, like a tiger on his prey, 
he leaped upon her, trying to strangle the 
life out of her throat before she could even 
utter a cry, or Hugh put out a hand to save 
her. 

It was a brief struggle — brief and horrible, for 
the dog joined in the fray, so that it seemed 
as if three wild beasts were struggling for 
possession of some white wounded thing, 
whose breath was being torn out of it, alike 
by those who sought to save as those who 
nought to slay it. 

The hissing of oaths, the subdued growls 
of the brute who mauled and tore at his mas- 
ter’s enemy, made an audible accompaniment 
to the deadly struggle in which the two men 
were engaged, and which resulted at last in 
Hugh’s victory, as he wrenched the murderer’s 


lOO 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER, 


hands from the girl’s throat, and flung him 
violently to a distance. 

The man lay stunned and silent; he had 
struck his head against a stone in falling, but 
Hugh recked little of that as he flung him- 
self down by the corpse-like figure that had 
been so bright and full of happiness but half- 
an-hour ago. 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER, 


lOl 


CHAPTER X. 

‘*0, thank ye na my heart was sair 
When my love droptdown and spake na mair?” 

“ Felida ! ” he cried, and could have wept at 
the sound of his own voice, to which no 
answer came, but only something strange and 
new upon the pale face, as if Death spoke 
for, and triumphantly claimed her as his own. 

Then he took the light shape in his arms, 
without one backward look at the prone figure 
with the dog beside it, and carried it swiftly 
to the house. 

Blood was pouring from the wounds made 
by the dog’s teeth, his clothes were torn, and 
he looked dishevelled enough to frighten a 
stronger- minded person than the old Nor- 
mandy peasant who sat by the hearth peeling 
potatoes. 


102 T'' OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 

'‘'La La L she cried, as he came in and 
deposited his burden on the kitchen table, 
“ what do you here, and what have you done 
to la petite?'' she added sharply, as she 
hobbled to the table. 

She spoke in French, and he answered her 
in the same tongue. 

“ I think she is dead,” he said ; “come and 
see.” 

A woman must talk, even if she be dying, 
or there are only dying ears to hear her; so 
while Celestine searched for signs of life, she 
lavished question after question upon Hugh. 
He answered her briefly enough, his heart 
aching at the thought of what his week of 
dallying had cost this poor, silent girl; and 
presently noticing that her little fist was firmly 
closed, he opened it with some difficulty, find- 
ing the threaded needle that she had held 
fast through the swiftness of the succeeding 
catastrophe. He took it away, together, with 
her silver thimble. A sob rose in his throat 
as he set them down. The old woman shook 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


103 


her head. She could find no throb of the 
heart, no beat of the pulse, and groaning, she 
wished that M. le Docteur were here, or rather 
that he had never gone away at all. 

“ He forbade me to lose sight of her, or 
to let anyone in, and the key of the door is in 
my pocket,^’ she said, turning the wrinkled 
pallor of her face on Hugh ; “ and voila! here 
are you, though how you got here I do not 
know. Did you kill la petite ! ” she added 
sharply. 

“ No,” said Hugh. “And now watch by 
her ; I am going to find a doctor.” 

With a last look at the pale girl, under 
whose head he placed a cushion, he turned 
to go, but the lonely house on the cliff was 
to be that day one of surprises, for on the 
threshold he met a stranger, a French- 
man. 

“Confound you, sir!” cried that gentle- 
man, warmly and in excellent English ; “ what 
the devil are you doing here ? ” 

It is always agreeable to be addressed in 


104 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


one’s own vernacular, and Hugh felt a dis- 
tinct sense of relief as he said : 

“ You are M. le Docteur ? ” 

“At your service.” But the stout, fresh 
keen-faced Frenchman looked quite the re- 
verse of his words. 

“ There is work for you here,” said Hugh, 
turning on his heel in the narrow passage. 
“ Felida is ” 

“ Pray what is Felida to you, sir ? ” flashed 
out the doctor. 

But Hugh had opened the kitchen door, 
and for all answer pointed to the table. 

The doctor flew to her, his expression less 
that of sorrow than of anger at the destruction 
of something valuable, and a passionate ex- 
clamation escaped him, as he leaned over 
her. 

“ Whose work is this ? ” he cried savagely. 

“ The work of a madman who called lum- 
self her husband,” said Hugh. “ Is she 
dead ? ” he added swiftly. 

For awhile the doctor made no reply, but 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


105 


pursued a close examination ; then he jerked 
out : 

“ Insensible, and three parts strangled, 
but she will probably recover. Go now, and 
return later, when you too will require my 
attendance. A fight ? ” he added, with some- 
thing strange and cynical in the glance he 
turned on Hugh's ragged trousers. 

“No, a dog,'' said Hugh, full of joy. 
“ Didn’t you see one in the garden,’' he cried 
quickly, beside the man who lay stunned } ” 

“ I saw nothing and nobody,” said the 
doctor, drily ; “ but finding my postern door 
open — to which there are two keys, one in 
my possession, and one, as I supposed, in 
Celestine’s — I took the liberty of walking 
through my own garden to my own house.’ 

' “ Where can he be.? ” said Hugh. “ He 

must have picked himself up pretty quickly 
after I brought Felida away,” 

Felida ? ” said the doctor, significantly. 

Hugh blushed, and passed out. 

No, the man was not in the garden, though 


I 06 T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 

the ground showed evidence of the struggle 
that had gone forward, and the postern door 
was locked, both keys presumably being in 
the doctor’s pocket. Joy danced in Hugh’s 
veins ; he scarcely felt his hurts in the 
delightful certainty that Felida lived, and yet 
— and yet — was she a female rascal ? That 
was the question which insensibly occupied 
Hugh’s mind as soon as he knew she had 
not decided on being a corpse. For it is a 
moral certainty that, however loudly we may 
bewail our dead to-day, we should, were they 
miraculously restored to us, harry them up 
as severely as ever long before to-morrow 
night. 

He sat down in the summer-house, and, 
looking sadly at the girl’s scattered work, 
began to think. Was Felida indeed this 
man’s wife.-^ Was the spontaneous, vividly 
happy life in the mere present that she had 
seemed to live the result of a deliberate 
resolve to shut out memory and an inconven- 
ient past ? Had she resolved to be happy at 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


107 

all costs? Or was it possible, thought Hugh, 
thrilled by a sudden cold horror, that this 
profound indifference in the girl meant mad- 
ness, instead of a sternly-enforced and brutal 
forgetfulness ? Impossible ! she was no more 
mad than criminal. A thousand traits of 
goodness and purity of nature recalled them- 
selves to his mind, and her character had un- 
rolled itself before him like the open pages 
of a delightful book to be read with ever- 
increasing admiration and pleasure. 

Was it not far more likely that this man 
was mad, or the victim of some fancied 
resemblance in Felida to his missing wife ? 
Hugh recalled the girl’s blank look of amaze- 
ment, of repudiation and disgust, her failure 
to recognise the dog — but now Hugh paused, 
for animals so seldom make mistakes of 
identity, men so often — and where was the 
ring that was said to have been placed on 
her finger, and of which she denied all 
knowledge ? 

And yet he had been in earnest — terribly 


I 08 T OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 

in earnest — as his attempt to kill her proved. 

The gnawing pain of torn flesh, hitherto 
unheeded in the excitement, now became 
more poignant, and the doctor’s voice, call- 
ing him from the distance, was responded to 
with eagerness. 

“ Felida ? ” he exclaimed on his entrance. 

“ She has had a narrow escape,” said the 
doctor, frowning, “ a few seconds more of 
pressure on the windpipe, and ” — he spread 
out his hands expressively. “ The muscles 
of her throat are injured, and she is suffering 
severely from shock ; but she will recover. 
And now for you,” he added brusquely. 

Not a word was exchanged between the 
two men while Hugh’s hurts were examined, 
or during the exceedingly bad quarter of an 
hour that followed. 

“ Might have been worse,” grunted the 
doctor when the burning business was over, 
“ and may be worse yet. You’d better run 
over to Paris and see Pasteur. How did it 
happen 1 ” he added abruptly. 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


109 

“ I was sitting in the garden,” Hugh 
nodded in its direction. 

“ And how the devil, sir, caine you to have 
business in my garden ? ” 

“ I wanted a rose,” said Hugh coolly. 

“ Who can hide a woman ! ” cried the doc- 
tor with a sardonic sneer. “ Go on — and 
you found Felida. How long ago.f^” 

“ A fortnight ! ” 

“ A fornight ” M. le Docteur turned 
pale through his dark skin, with positive fear 
in his eyes as he looked at the fair, straight- 
limbed, sunny-haired young man before him. 

“ And she fell in love with you ? ” he said 
in a flat voice. 

“ Not at all.” 

“ And you ? ” flashed out the doctor, 

“ I ? She is very charming,” he said. 

The French doctor shrugged his shoulders. 

“ Opportunity is the thief of virtue,” he 
said. 

“ Sir! ” cried Hugh furiously. 

“ Put that in your English copy-books,” 


I lO 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


said the doctor imperturbably. “ With us, 
we give no opportunities, so none are taken. 
Voila tout ! Safe bind, safe find. You see, 
I know your English reedles.” 

“ I see that you insult the young lady and 
me too,” said Hugh angrily. “ But is she 
married Was that man her husband ” 

“Yes.” 

Hugh uttered an exclamation of disgust, 
then cried, “ But she denied him to his face,” 
and briefly recapitulated the events of the 
morning. 

“ And may I ask,” said the doctor, “ what 
you and she were about, to so seriously arouse 
the ire of her excellent husband } ” 

“ It was really most unfortunate,” said 
poor Hugh, “ but at that moment Felida 
happened to be on my knee. It was the first 
time such a thing had ever occurred ” — he 
paused, and if he did not look a fool, certainly 
felt one. 

And what were you doing.? ” said the 
doctor with a whimsical air. 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


Ill 


“ Oh, nothing ! ” said Hugh innocently. 
“ It really wasn’t my fault, or hers either, that 
just as she passed me, she should fall asleep.” 

“ h^all asleep ! ” said the doctor, taking him 
up sharply. “ Then that accounts for it,” he 
muttered aside to himself. 

“ Yes,” said Hugh, “ suddenly, in one 
moment when she was actually standing up.” 

“What had you been saying to her.?” 
said the doctor, swiftly. “ Had you upset 
her in any way ? ” 

“ I only told her I was going away,” be- 
gan Hugh. 

“Yes — go on,” said the doctor, breathlessly 

“ And she looked troubled, and got up, and 
almost immediately fell asleep.” 

“ No wonder she did not know her husband,” 
said the doctor; “ and no wonder, too,” he 
added, drily, “ that at sight of so sweetly do- 
mestic an idyll he went a little mad, and his 
dog followed suit.” 

“ But is she.?” cried Hugh, desper- 

ately ; “a female villain — or — mad .? ” 


II2 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


“ Neither,” said the doctor, deliberately light- 
ing a cigarette; “her moral character and 
truth are above suspicion. Young man,” he 
added abruptly, “ you came to pluck a rose, 
and you have brought about a tragedy, for by 
this time I expect Felida s husband has de- 
stroyed himself.” 

“ Then,” cried Hugh, with energy, “ it is 
his wife’s doing ; the moral, the truthful wife, 
who looked him full in the face and denied 
and drove him to madness. May God forgive 
her ! ” 

“No doubt God will, ’ said the doctor gravely, 
“ for she is absolutely blameless. Sit down 
over there and hear her story ; then condemn 
her if you dare.” 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


II3 


CHAPTER XI. 

“I came na here to fight, he said ; 

I came na here to play ; 

I ’ll but lead a dance wi’ the bonny bride, 
And mount and go my way.” 

“ The case of Felida,” said the doctor, delib- 
erately, “ is so unique, so extraordinary, as to 
make her an object of intense interest to the 
whole scientific world. Had you been in the 
medical profession you must have heard of it, 
but if you had not by a strange accident been 
yourself witness to her double life, you would 
probably, on hearing of it, dismiss the story as 
an old wife’s tale. Stay, you are pale,” and he 
rose and brought brandy and glasses from a 
cupboard. “ If you were an author,” he said, 
presently, when they had both drunk, “ and 
put what I am going to tell you into a book, 
no one would believe you. But it is never- 


II4 


T OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


theless true, and can be attested to by other 
doctors beside myself. So resolved, however 
was I that no possible deception should be 
practiced upon me (for often the cleverest of 
us are deceived for years by our subjects) that 
three months ago” — (he paused to give de- 
liberate emphasis to his words) — “ I resolved 
upon an experiment. I brought her here, to 
a place carefully prepared for her isolation — 
for I even built the wall round the house that 
in my frequent absences she might be secure 
from seeing any human being save Celestine — 
and thought I had concealed her safely as in a 
tomb, where there was nothing, not even an 
indication, to remind her of her former state? 
or provoke by mere association the force of 
memory. That experiment, young man, you 
and Fate have done your best to spoil, though 
you have not wholly succeeded.” 

“ And how so ? ” said Hugh, with asperity. 
“ It was rather a cruel one, I imagine ; and 
her husband must be a strange fellow to have 
consented to it.” 


T'> OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 115 

“ He never did,” said the Frenchman, 
calmly. “ He married her, and a month after 
— he is a merchant captain — went away on a 
voyage. He left her in my charge.” 

“ Curse your experiments ! ” cried Hugh, 
starting up with flashing eyes. “ What right 
had you to take her wedding-ring off her fin- 
ger, and spirit her away to a prison like this.'^ 
If she is not capable of taking care of herself, 
the more reason why you should look after 
her, and if I were her husband I’d break every 
bone in your body.” 

The Frenchman shrugged his shapely 
shoulders, and smiled with an air of tolerance 
as at a passionate child. 

If the husband has been kept in the dark,” 
he said, “ Felida has been in no way deceived. 
She came here willingly to submit herself to 
the experiment I wished; and, as usual, when 
you persuade a woman to do a somewhat 
disagreeable thing — I bribed her.” 

“ With what ” cried Jack indignantly, as, 
angered by her want of truth, he saw his 


ii6 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


bright companion changing into a scheming, 
mercenary woman. 

“ With the fee-simple of a first-class coutu- 
rieres business in Auvergne,” said the doctor, 
half closing his eyes. “ Her husband is fairly 
well off, but she loves needle-work, and can- 
not leave it alone ; it is the passion of her 
life.” 

“ Yes, she is always at her needle,” assented 
Jack, resentfully. “ But in Heaven’s name 
what made her deny him like that.f^ Was 
it because — because ” 

“ You were there ” said the doctor, drily. 
“ Set your mind at ease on that point, and* 
don’t let the thought of her unrequited love 
prey on you. She is sincerely attached to her 
husband.” 

“ So she appeared,” said Hugh, with a 
fierce sneer. “ Oh, the jade ! ” he muttered 
aside. 

“ And he to her,” continued the doctor, 
" calmly. 

“ Oh, very much so ! ” cried Hugh in a 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


117 


rage, thinking of what a fool he must have 
looked to this curiously loving husband 
and wife. “ He certainly behaved as if he 
did.” 

“ But to understand a story,” said the doc- 
tor, “ you must hear it from the beginning.” 

“Fire away then,” said Hugh, and impa- 
tiently resumed his seat. 

“ Felida Le Feuvre,” said the doctor, “ to 
give her her married name, is the daughter 
of a deceased French captain ; her mother, 
an Englishwoman (hence Felida’s knowledge 
of English), is a woman of education, who, 
left unprovided for, was forced to bring up 
her children to work for their living. Dom- 
iciled immediately under my observation, I 
saw the girl grow up very intelligent, but 
highly nervous, and with symptoms of hysteria, 
although this did not prevent her following 
the trade of a dressmaker, in which she be- 
came very proficient. When nearly fifteen, 
without known cause, though sometimes un- 
der the influence of emotion, she would fall 


1 1 8 T'O THER DEAR CHA RMER. 

into a strange state, similar to sleep. This 
state would last about ten minutes ; she would 
open her eyes, appear to awaken, and enter 
into the second state, that may be properly 
termed second condition, and which I will de- 
scribe later. It lasted an hour or two, and 
the drowsiness and sleep returned, and Felida 
returned to her ordinary state. This sort of 
access returned every five or six hours, or 
more rarely, and her mother and those sur- 
rounding her, seeing the change in her ways, 
during this sort of second life, believed her 
mad. Soon she had convulsions, and the 
phenomena of supposed madness becoming 
more disquieting, I was called in to attend 
her for a malady that every one supposed to 
be mental. 

“ I found her then in appearance much 
what she is now, a brunette of middle height, 
and highly intelligent, but of a character sad 
and at the same time morose, speaking little, 
and then seriously ; of very reserved mind, 
and an intense ardour for work that nothing: 

O 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 119 

seemed to satisfy. I was particularly struck 
by her sombre air and little desire to speak. 
She answered questions, that was all ; but 
from an intellectual point of view, I found 
her acts, ideas, and conversation perfectly 
reasonable. I heard, I watched, I myself 
repeatedly saw her pass into the curious 
second state as follows : — Imagine her seated, 
work in hand ; suddenly her head falls on her 
breast ; her hands sink inert on her knees ; 
she is asleep, or appears to sleep, but wiih a 
special sleep, for nothing, not even shaking, 
or pinching, or pricking will wake her ; more, 
this falling into sleep is absolutely sudden. 

“ It lasts two or three minutes, sometimes 
longer, then Felida wakes, but not in the 
same intellectual state as before she fell asleep. 
All is different. She lifts her head, and, 
opening her eyes, salutes with smiles the 
people surrounding her, as if she had just 
arrived ; her features, but now heavy and 
sad, sparkle with gaiety, her speech is lively, 
and humming a tune she continues the needle- 


120 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER, 


work upon which she has previously been 
engaged; presently she goes, out, circulates 
in the town, pays visits, perhaps undertakes 
fresh work, her manners being those natural 
to a happy young girl of her age, so that no 
one could discern anything in the least ex- 
traordinary in her ways, only her character 
is completely changed and for the better. 
She is gay, vivacious, charming, of a lively 
imagination, and easily moved to joy or 
sorrow, far more affectionate to those about 
her than in her normal state, and knows not 
what pain is, and, in a word — with com- 
pleter and more fully developed faculties — 
has in every way a superior life to the other. 
In this second life she remembers everything 
that has passed in her normal existence, also in 
her previous states of second condition ; while 
in her normal state she has no memory what- 
ever of what has passed during this second 
and happy existence.” 

“ And it was in this second existence that 
I knew her.f^” said Hugh, upon whose bewil- 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


I2I 


dered brain light was beginning to dawn. 
“ You mean to tell me that Felida in one 
condition is absolutely ignorant of what 
Felida has done in the other 1 ” 

“ I mean to say,” said the doctor, “ that 
you can realise her position by supposing 
that you have forgotten the last few days, or 
perhaps months, that they are absolutely torn 
out of your life, like a chapter from a book 
you are reading, and you may imagine the 
confusion and trouble such a blank would 
cause you. You yourself would be the same 
in your occupations, your habits, you would 
only entirely forget the things you had done, 
and the fresh persons, animals, etc., you had 
known in that state which you can’t re- 
member ! ” 

“ Heaven forbid ! ” ejaculated Hugh, 
piously. “ Why, one might get married, do 
fifty stupid things as an unconscious agent, 
and then be hauled up for it after } ” 

The doctor smiled in spite of himself. 

“ You interrupted me,” he said, “ let me 


22 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


continue. We left Felida there in what I 
may term her happy condition — a condition 
that at first lasted only a few hours, then by 
slow degrees (extending over a number of 
years) gradually grew into days, then into 
weeks, finally into months, so that at the pres- 
ent time Felida spends the major part of her 
existence in this second state. When she 
awakens from it, she goes through the same 
phase as when she falls into it ; her head sinks, 
she falls into a torpor, then opens her eyes, and 
is in her ordinary existence. She continues 
her work with ardour, almost with vehemence, 
though if it is work undertaken during her re- 
cent state she knows nothing of it, and has to 
seek explanation concerning it as best she can, 
and bitterly deploring her unhappy state. A 
few moments before she has been singing a 
gay chanson, her family redemand it, but she 
ignores what they say ; they remind her of 
a visit she has received, she has seen no one. 
This forgetfulness applies only to what has 
passed in her happy condition ; any general 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


123 


idea acquired before is not affected, and she 
conducts her business and her life precisely 
as before. Psychologically, this character is 
most important, as in other known cases of 
doubling of life forgetfulness extends itself to 
all the past life, and comprises general ideas. 
Not to weary you, I will pass over the many 
interesting features in the case which I have 
for twelve years (she is now five-and-twenty) 
unremittingly watched, and pass to between 
three and four months ago, when a young 
man, a stranger to her family and herself, 
met her while she, in her second condition, 
was on a visit to friends, fell passionately in 
love with her, and gave her no peace till she 
promised to be his wife.” 

“ She loved him V' said Hugh. 

“ Yes ; but in a less degree. She accepted 
him, and in that she did no wrong, but she 
also deceived him, and the deception was 
Felida’s, not mine. She has a morbid horror 
of speaking or hearing of her peculiarity (and 
has, indeed, from long practice become an 


124 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


adept at hiding it), and calls her normal 
state her ‘ right frame of mind,’ oblivious of 
the relief and happiness she has found in the 
other. When she returned home she insisted 
that neither her family nor I should acquaint 
him with her misfortune, and as the marriage 
took place almost immediately, it so chanced 
that he was not undeceived. He was a mer- 
chant captain, as her father had been, and a 
month after the marriage he went away on a 
sea-voyage, meaning to be absent a consid- 
erable time. When he had gone, she being 
still in her second condition, it occurred tome 
that if on awakening to her normal state she 
proved herself unconscious of an event that 
had shaken her nature to its very depths, she 
would present an incontestable proof of living 
an absolutely dual life. In her home there 
would be many things to remind her of her 
husband and awaken memory when she came 
to herself, and I wished her to have no such 
aids, and as she was willing to put herself 
entirely in my hands I brought her here as I 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


125 


have already told you, meaning to take her 
home again before her husband returned, 
though not, I fully hoped, before she had 
re-entered her normal state.” 

“ It was bad behaviour to the husband,” 
said Hugh gravely, “ about as bad as could 
be. I call it a fraud to let a man marry a 
bright happy creature, as he thinks, only to 
find out afterwards she is a poor hysterical 
sufferer, morally and physically incapable of 
the duties of life.” 

“ Do you ? ” said the doctor. “ I don’t. 
And but for you, young man, he would have 
found Felida in the condition in which 
he left her, and all would have gone well. 
You, by giving her a shock, probably of 
sorrow” — the doctor looked keenly at the 
young man — “ roused her out of that state, 
and drove her back into her normal one, 
the sleep into which she fell being the link 
between the two conditions.” ^ 

“ Then she was not acting a part ? ” cried 
Hugh with intense relief ; “ she honestly be- 


126 


r OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


lieved that she had never seen her husband 
before ? ” 

“ Most decidedly,” said the doctor, “ and 
the same with the dog : they were perfectly 
strange to her. On one occasion, in her 
second condition, she was returning in a 
fiacre from the funeral of a relation, when 
suddenly she felt coming on what she de- 
scribes as her access, or normal state. She 
fell asleep for a few moments, awaking to 
find herself in a mourning carriage, abso- 
lutely ignorant of why she was there, and in 
the company of persons who vaunted the 
qualities of a defunct of whom she did not 
even know the name. On another occasion 
she lost consciousness in the street, and was 
succoured by the passers-by. Awaking in 
her other condition, she thanked them, laugh- 
ing heartily, and those around naturally could 
not understand this singular gaiety. But to 
resume ” 

“ I have heard enough ! ” cried Hugh, 
starting up, “ enough to make me sincerely 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER, 


127 


pity that poor little soul, and to make me 
more sorry for him, and for my share in 
bringing about the catastrophe, than I ever 
was about anything in my life before. And 
another time you try experiments, I advise it 
not to be on human flesh and blood.” 

“ Stay,” said the doctor, laying his hand on 
the angry young man’s arm ; “ you have heard 
me so far, and you shall hear the rest. As I 
have said, the case of Felida is one that has 
engaged the attention of the whole scientific 
world, and science is exact, and must have 
proof positive of everything advanced. I 
don’t say that I have been disbelieved, but I 
wish to give incontestable proof, and it 
seemed to me a crucial point, that Felida could 
actually get married in her second condition, 
and absolutely forget it in her normal state, 
and I had arranged for certain English 
scientific men to come here and verify the 
fact for themselves. All this I explained to 
Felida, offering her the bribe I mentioned, 
and, as I had planned to take her home be- 


128 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


fore the returti of her husband, she fell in 
with my plans very readily. I have now 
emphatically proved that it is a case of double 
life, or double conscience — what you will; 
and I hope,” continued the doctor, with the 
ruthless indifference to human feeling that 
characterises the truly scientific man, “ that 
you will not object to appearing at a society 
and relating exactly what you have seen ? ” 

“ ril see you at the devil first ! ” burst 
out Hugh furiously, adding, as he rushed 
away, “and now I’m going to look for that 
poor fellow, and find him I will — living or 
dead!” 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER, 


129 


CHAPTER XII. 


“Awa, awa, thou traitor strang ! 

Out o’ my sight soon mayest thou be I 
I granted never a traitor’s life, 

And now I’ll not begin wi’ thee ! ” 


Hugh never thought of the key till he 
reached the postern -door, so got over the wall 
as he had often done before, thinking of 
what a gulf lay between his last careless 
descent and his present one. 

In the dusty road, the twilight all around 
him, veiling the scene that had come to be so 
familiar to him, he stood still to think. 

There were three courses open to the man 
whom exceeding agony had hurried into 
crime — viz., to destroy himself, to revenge 
9 


130 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER, 


himself, or to get drunk — the last being the 
usual resource of a sailor in trouble. 

The first seemed the more probable con- 
sidering his passionate temperament, but 
Hugh rejected the suggestion, such unpleas- 
antly cold qualms did it cause him, as being 
too cowardly a deed for so furious a per- 
son ; while the second commended itself to 
him, as a scheme of revenge must bring the 
two men to close quarters, when an explana- 
tion of what seemed totally unexplainable 
could be given. The third hypothesis Hugh 
summarily rejected; however much to blame 
Felida might be, she would hardly marry a 
man of low tastes, and there was no occasion 
to beat up the pot-houses that abounded in 
the little towns lying right and left of the 
landslip. 

Granted, then, that he need not search for 
a dead body, or scour the district for a living 
one, was he to sit down here in the road and 
wait until Nemesis in . the person of Felida’s 
husband came up with him 1 For revenge 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


he might bring something stronger than his 
hands, and how easy for a man to hide him- 
self in this rocky wilderness of trees and 
shrubs, and pot his quarry comfortably from 
out of sight. 

Hugh looked keenly around him ; it would 
soon be as nearly dark as a summer night 
ever is, but he remembered that there was a 
moon later. He remembered something else, 
too, that even his excitement could not make 
him forget — he was exceedingly hungry, and 
he was two miles from the nearest place 
where he could get food. To be sure there 
was plenty in the house behind him, but what 
man of proper pride, rushing forth on a self- 
imposed task of derring-do, was ever. sneak 
enough to come creeping back to the larder to 
first satisfy his hunger, and give him cour- 
age? 

So Hugh, having lit a cigar, set out with- 
out more ado for Regis, easily discernible in 
his white flannels at a considerable distance. 
If M. Felix were on the watch, he thought, 


132 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


with characteristic carelessness, he would 
probably be drawn on to follow him, and he 
must trust to that gentleman s sense of honour, 
if he carried firearms, not to shoot him in the 
back, or pick him off without giving at least 
a chance at retaliation. So, with erect bear- 
ing, and free, graceful step, the young man 
pursued his way, now showing clearly on 
some ascent, now sinking out of sight among 
the brushwood, but always making a bee-line 
across the broken ground, and always making 
a distinct landmark in the surrounding gloom. 
He never once looked back, but a man does 
not live three years in the Australian bush 
for nothing, and he had not left the cottage 
fifty paces when he knew that he was “shad- 
owed.” Yet where was the dog Probably 
strangled, poor, faithful beast, lest his where- 
abouts should betray his master, and so 
Hugh’s cruelly smarting hurts were avenged. 

Had he turned, it is improbable that he 
would have seen this shadow, so vague was 
the light, and so easy was it to hide, but his 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


133 


indifference seemed the noblest courage to 
the poor wretch who believed his hands to be 
as those of Cain, and who was resolved to 
take yet another life before he squandered 
his own. 

Gradually the moon rose : silvery fair and 
calm she rose over the sea, with that holiness 
she keeps for the sea alone, nor ever smiles 
with such divinity upon the restless earth, 
with its fever, and fret, and unquiet. In that 
light, the tall white-clad figure showed ever 
more and more clearly, and was easily tracked 
when the confines of the Landslip were 
reached, and passing along a path that wound 
round a copse, Hugh crossed a gate and a 
meadow, then another meadow, and followed a 
narrow path along the edge of a cliff that on 
one side sloped down to a vast field that in 
time of cowslips was one golden sheet of 
scented bloom. 

Following this path you might at the end 
of it walk over an abyss into the sea, or pause 
a few steps from its edge and take the thread- 


134 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


like way that wound downwards past cliffs, 
and through meadows to the town, that lay 
snugly curled up with its harbour and cob 
wall in a natural hollow, its lights twinkling 
far below. A man may be brave without 
rashness, and at this dangerous point, where 
a man might meet life or death with indif- 
ferent ease, Hugh Valentine turned sharply, 
and saw a dark figure crouched down against 
the furze bushes that on one side lined the 
path. 

In the broken Landslip how easily his 
shadow might have escaped him ! But here, 
on this gorse-crowned summit, with only the 
far-away meadow below, they were in a cul- 
de-sac, and neither, without suicide, could get 
away from the other. 

Swift as thought Hugh had retraced his 
steps, and laid his hand on the man’s shoulder 
before the other even realised that he was 
discovered, or had made a movement to elude 
hfm. 

“ Why do you follow as an enemy one who 


V OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


135 


is your friend ? ” said Hugh, rapidly in 
French. 

The man sprang up, flinging off his grasp 
with a fury that would have sent Hu^h clean 
over the edge of the path had he not been on 
the lookout for it, and already twisted one 
hand in the gorse bushes, while with the 
other he struck down something that gleamed 
brightly in the moonlight. 

“We’re face to face now,” hissed out the 
Frenchman, in the same language, struggling 
to free his arm ; “ if you had stood another 
second outside that wall I should have shot 
you like the dog that you are, but you turned 

your back, and you were safe. Now ”he 

tried to clutch Hugh’s throat with his free 
hand, but the Englishman’s great stature 
stood him in good stead, and he drew him 
himself easily out of reach of his assail- 
ant. 

“ Have you not done enough strangling 
for to-day ” he cried coldly, then suddenly 
forced open the man’s fingers, and jerked 


136 TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER. 

out the pistol, that fell some eighty feet 
below, 

“You are not to be trusted with it,” he 
said, composedly. “ Do you suppose that I 
didn’t know you were behind me all the 
time ? ” 

“ You’re a brave man,” said the other, 
grudgingly, his dark olive-skinned face de- 
formed by the hell burning in his heart ; “ but 
you are not too brave to steal a man’s wife 
from him behind Jiis back, and debase, ruin, 
and make of her a vile 

Hugh’s hand, clapped suddenly on the 
man’s mouth, silenced the voice that had 
risen to a mad shriek. 

“Silence ! ” he thundered, in a voice that 
might have been heard far out at sea, and 
with that trumpet-note of truth which carries 
conviction with it. “ She is your faithful 
wife, and as innocent a woman as God ever 
made ! ” 

My faithful wife ! ” The poor wretch 
gibbered the words after Hugh. “ Asleep 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER, 


^S7 


in your arms — upon your knee! Oh, tell me 
I am mad, mad ! My faithful wife, who dented 
me, who said over and over again, ‘ I have 
never seen you before — never! ’ who thrust 
away even my dog, who loved her — my poor 
. dog, whom but now I slew because he also 
loved me so much he would not leave 
me!” 

“ See here,” cried Hugh, who was now 
more calm, “ call her and me whatever you 
please, but first be man enough to give me 
two minutes’ speech with you. Can’t you 
control yourself sufficiently for that.!^” he 
added sharply. 

Those who possess least self-control always 
pride themselves most upon it, Frenchmen 
especially, and this one was stung into a 
supreme effort by Hugh’s words. 

“ Say on,” he said, sullenly, drawing a little 
apart, as if mere contact with the other were 
loathsome to him ; but Hugh did not im- 
mediately speak, and for a moment on that 
lofty summit, with only sea and sky within 


138 T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 

their view, they stood still looking at each 
other hesitation in the eyes, of the one, mis- 
trust and doubt in those of the other. 

After all, it takes a lot of explaining to a man 
that his finding his wife asleep on your knee 
is the purest accident, and Hugh felt its 
awkwardness keenly, even while the humour 
of the situation (for ever does farce intrude 
itself on tragedy) so appealed to him that he 
only just saved himself from bursting into 
unseemly mirth. 

“ M. le Feuvre,” he said,“ mine is a difficult 
task, and one which the doctor could far 
better discharge than I.” 

“ M. le Docteur ! And what has he to do 
with it ? And pray, did I find her in his arms 
or yours ? ” flashed out the Frenchman like 
forked ligrhtninQ;. 

“ Unhappily, in mine,” said Hugh gravely, 
and turning so manly and honourable a face 
on his interlocutor as for the moment to 
abash him. “ Your wife, in the act of pass- 
ing me, fell asleep, and would have fallen had 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


139 


I not supported her. Almost in the same 
moment you appeared, and ” 

A peal of laughter, violent as of a mock- 
ing devil, interrupted Hugh’s little “expla- 
nation,” discomposing him mightily. 

“ Ha, ha, ha ! ” the goblin shouts rang out 
wilder and wilder, and Hugh, a little off his 
centre, and forgetting his mortification, act- 
ually found himself at last joining in heartily. 

His mirth quenched his companion’s. The 
Frenchman’s jaw dropped ; for a moment he 
gazed at the Englishman with fear, since, no 
matter how mad a person may be himself, he 
usually disapproves of madness in anybody 
else. 

“ Can’t you find some better lie to tell me 
than that ? ” he said, his features convulsed 
and deformed by passion. “ Am I a fool, 
a child, think you, to swallow such a tale 
as that? Scoundrel, coquin, liar!'' he 
thundered out, and fell upon Hugh like a 
madman for the second time that evening. 

“ You ! ” he cried in gasps as he struggled 


140 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


with Hugh, “ defiler of innocence, robber of 
my hearth, shall such as ypu be left to do 
more of the devil’s work unpunished ? ” 

“You are a fool,” said Hugh, exercising 
his whole strength so suddenly as to free 
himself from the man and throw him to a 
distance, “and I won’t tell you another syl- 
lable to pull you out of the hell your own 
bad passions have flung you into.” 

And without another word he went swiftly 
away, disappearing almost immediately down 
the steep path at the side of the cliff. The 
Frenchman stood perfectly still, all the pas- 
sion, noble in itself, gone out of tiim, a fell, 
cowardly, cruel resolve taking birth in his 
heart. 

“ A life for a life,” he said, looking up to 
the starlit sky with eyes that had murder in 
them, then swiftly followed the path that 
Hugh had taken. 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER, 


141 


CHAPTER XIIL 

**She lookit o’er her left shoulder, 

To hide the tear stood in her 'ee ; 

‘Now fare ye well, young Beichan,' she says, 

‘ ril try to think nae mair on thee. ’ ” 

M. LE Docteur rose early, and while break- 
fast was preparing walked for a while in his 
kitchen garden, which indeed combined 
many advantages, as you could cut a salad 
there, or gather a rose with equal ease. 

He was not romantic, the scientific man 
seldom is, so he chose the salad and carried 
it in to be dressed, then he examined the 
fruit, and finally paused opposite the pyramid 
of flower-pots, and scowled at them as if he 
hoped and expected they would return the 
compliment. 


142 


T'' OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


“ A rose ! ” he said aloud ; “ don’t tell me 
that it was only a rose that brought' that 
young man over the wall — it was her pretty 
face, of course ; more fool I to suppose a 
man could ever build anything without a 
woman’s making up her mind to see what 
was on the other side ! Of course she 
peeped, and as good as asked him in. Climb 
the highest staircase in the world, they say, 
and you will find a woman at the top of it! 
And he came over, of course, and if he were 
not a young aristocrat of the best quality 
there would have been serious mischief — 
though to be sure bad’s the best of the busi- 
ness now. And after she had given me her 
solemn promise not to look at, or speak to a 
soul while I was away ! But even when a 
woman tries to run straight, she never does.” 

He paused, and looked at the rows of 
cabbages, now dressed in kingly robes of 
sparkling dew. 

“ If you only knew it,” he said, apostro- 
phising them, “ you have been the critics in 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER, 


143 


the stalls, spectators of a drama that any play- 
wright might be proud of conceiving. The 
sleeping wife, wearing the garb of a wanton, 
in the young man’s arms, the betrayed hus- 
band rushing on the unconscious pair, her 
cold-blooded denial of him, and his furious 
attempt to choke the life out of her lying 
throat, the wild man-and-beast struggle, and 
lastly, his crime committed, the husband rush- 
ing away to suicide or — revenge.” 

The doctor paused again, a look of con- 
cern flitting across the calmness of his fea- 
tures. 

“ I should be sorry if anything happened 
to that young fellow,” he muttered, “ but it 
was a reckless thing to do, to cross that wall 
with a probable murderer hanging about out- 
side and plenty of cover in which to hide. 
Fortunately there was a moon last night, and 
I heard no shots. If it came to mere fists, I 
would back the Englishman against Felix. 
Poor F'elix ! It’s rough on him : but if a 
man marries a case interesting to the whole 


144 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


world of science he must take the conse- 
quences. True, he didn’t know; for it’s ‘ for 
better, for worse,’ and if he is alive she’ll 
make him happy yet.” 

He walked to the postern door, opened it, 
and looked out. Bright and beautiful the 
sea burst upon his view, wild and fresh as no 
rushing inland water can ever be, and he 
drew a deep breath of enjoyment, purely 
physical, but very satisfying for all that. 

His eye followed the picturesque rise and 
fall of the broken ground, over which Nature 
had so tenderly thrown her many-tinted man- 
tle of green, and rested on the distant ridge, 
sharp against the skyline, on the edge of 
which the two men had met the night be- 
fore. 

A dangerous place for a man to walk with 
an enemy behind him. He made a move- 
ment as if to approach it, but a prudent 
thought of breakfast drew him back, and he 
walked a few steps in the opposite direction 
instead. 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


U5 

He had not gone far when a dark object, 
huddled up at the base of a rock, some yards 
away, fixed his attention. It was something 
human, he saw at a glance, and it was dead. 
He went close up to it, and uttered an ex- 
clamation. 

“ Felix’s dog,” he said, turning it over, 
“strangled. That means revenge — revenge 
to which he sacrificed what he loved best on 
earth, next to Felida. Poor beast!” He let 
fall the handsome head, with its piteous look 
of wonder, of reproach, in its convulsed 
features. “ Had you not been faithful, even 
to a murderer, you would be living now.” 

He turned his back on the dog, looking 
lightly and apprehensively along the way 
Hugh had taken, as if there might be some- 
thing there he did not wish to see. 

“ After breakfast,” he said, retracing his 
steps to the garden, “ after breakfast I will 
seek him. A hungry man does no good 
work, and even at this distance, I think I 
smell coffee.” 


lO 


146 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


But he was not to get that coffee just yet, 
for he spied approaching him in the flesh, 
the very person of whose possible corpse he 
had a moment ago been thinking. 

“ M. le Docteur ! ” shouted Hugh from a 
distance, “ I have news — news! He is not 
dead, he wishes only to kill me — and I fancy 
he’s bobbing about somewhere in the dis- 
tance now. How is she ? ” 

The Frenchman spread out his hands in 
satisfaction even while he winced under 
Hugh’s French, which was grammatically 
accurate, but with an accent that you might 
cut. 

“ Good ! ” he said in his pure Parisian, 
“and you are well able to take care of your- 
self. When he has calmed down a little, we 
will explain.” 

“ As well explain to a mad bull,” said 
Hugh, impatiently, who bore, signs of hurry, 
and who had indeed run nearly the whole 
way, so that he might get back in time 
for his uncle’s breakfast-table. “ But the 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


147 


beggar will suffer a bit, for he doesn’t know 
that he hasn’t killed Felida.” 

“ Did you call her that to his face ? ” said 

M. le Docteur drily, “ if so ” 

“ No. How is she ? ” 

“ Recovering. She has forgotten all about 
you, all about yesterday, hasn’t the least idea 
she is married — though she knew it well 
enough, the jade, all the while she was en- 
couraging your visits.” 

“ It was only because she was dull, and 
wanted company,” said Hugh, feeling never- 
theless some disappointment in Felida, and 
thinking her conduct disingenuous compared 
with Dosia’s proud truthfulness of character, 
“ I never thought to ask her if she were 
married, any more than she asked me ques- 
tions about myself.” 

The Frenchman raised his eyebrows. 

“ And are you married too.^ ” he said. 

“ No, but I hope to be some day.” 

“ Ah ! I wish you happiness. Excuse 
me, but my breakfast is waiting— and I have 


148 


T'OTHER HEAR CHARMER, 


had an anxious night. If you can bring 
Captain le Feuvre with you, a reasonable 
man, back to his wife, I shall be glad to see 
you. Otherwise ” 

Hugh’s face fell. 

“ I should have liked to see her,” he said 
“ poor little girl, we were such friends” — and 
indeed to his life’s end he kept a corner of 
his heart for the blithe comrade whose ac- 
quaintance with him had begun in sunshine 
and ended in darkest storm. 

“ When you bring her husband,” said M. 
le Docteur inexorably, with his hand on the 
door, “ until then, I appeal to your honour not 
to attempt to enter this place, or approach 
her.” 

He shut and locked the door smartly, then 
turned to meet Felida, neatly dressed as usual, 
but pale, and with white bandages round her 
throat. 

Her hands were full of work ; she looked 
distressed and unhappy as she hurried to- 
wards him. 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


149 


“ Oh, M. le Docteur,” she cried in a dolor- 
ous voice, and in French, “ why am 1 here, 
and what has happened to me? Where are 
my brothers and sisters, and where my 
mother ? Often as I have been ” — she hesi- 
tated over the word — ■“ strange- — before, I 
have always come to myself at home — among 
my own people. I am frightened. Monsieur, 
frightened.” 

And she wept in a- crushed, helpless way^ 
that moved him to pity, but before he could 
speak, she said, holding her skirts to him : 

“ See how I am dressed ! It is absurd for 
a mere couturiere. What would my clients 
say if they beheld me thus? My clients — 
alas ! I have forgotten the orders they gave 
me, and there is no one here as at home, to 
put me au courant with everything. If you 
were not here, Monsieur, I think I should go 
mad with fear — it is all like one bad horrible 
nightmare — since I woke yesterday with that 
strange man shouting at me, and crying out 
that I was his wife. There was another man 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER, 


150 

there too” — she put her hand in bewilder- 
ment to her head — whom I had never seen 
before, and he tried to save me when that 
madman seized me by the throat Oh, my 
God ! I can feel that agony and the very 
bitterness of death yet ! ” 

She shuddered as she touched the band- 
ages, and looked as if she would fall. 

“ Then there was the dog ” — she gazed 
affrightedly around her — “ I thought he would 
have killed that gentleman, and I could not 
even cry out; and I came to myself in a 
strange room, with an old woman tending me 
whom I had never seen before ! ” 

“ Calm yourself, my child,” said the doctor, 
soothingly, and guiding her towards the house, 
and breakfast ; “ you are safe now, in my 
care, and no one shall harm you, petite."' 

“ But I want to go home,” she said res- 
tively ; “ all my work is waiting for me, and 
what will my clients say ? ” 

“ That one must breakfast wherever one 
is,” said the doctor, as they neared the house. 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 151 

“ But how do you come here? ” she said, 
in a dissatisfied tone. “ I left you in Au- 
vergne ; you were crossing the square to get 
into your carriage, and when I saw you last 
night I thought — she hesitated — “ that I 
must be still ‘ strange.’ ” 

“ Come to breakfast,” said the doctor, 
cheerily, “ and let us talk after.” 


152 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER, 


CHAPTER XIV. 

“But how shall I your true-love find, 

Or how should I her knaw ? 

I bear a tongue ne’er wid her spak, 

An eye that ne’er her saw. ” 

“ So Mr. Treherne is at Seamouth ? '' said. 
Mr. Belle w to his nephew, after breakfast, as 
they smoked their cigarettes in the billiard- 
room, “ at least Dunster, who knows every- 
body’s business, told me last night. I shall 
now be able to gratify my curiosity about 
Miss Dosia.’ 

“ You mean to go over?” said Hugh, be- 
ginning to knock the balls about. 

‘'Yes. This afternoon. You can drive 
the bay mare.” 

“ Very sorry, sir, but I can’t. Miss Dosia 
and I have quarrelled.” 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


153 


“ Pooh ! Anyway, I haven’t with her father 
— nor have you either, I imagine.” 

“ No, but I would rather you excused me, 
sir.” 

“ Only I shan’t,” said Mr. Bellew testily, 
his healthy old apple cheeks growing pinker 
at this opposition. “ I particularly want to 
know what Treherne thinks about the Irish 
land bill. And how can I go without you ? 
I’ll order the T-cart and Sally to be ready at 
three o’clock sharp. So that’s why you’ve 
looked so glum the last two days, eh } ” 

“ O, I’ve been all right.” 

“ She’ll think none the worse of you, man, 
for going back. A woman’s worst fury is 
roused by the sight of a man’s back. The 
moment he shows his face, she’s happy.” 

“ Do you think so, sir ? ” said Hugh, laugh- 
ing. 

“ Tm sure of it. Neglect, absence, they’re 
the only two things that ever kill a woman’s 
love — it survives everything else.” 

“ Well, sir, don’t blame me if we get a cool 


154 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


reception. Perhaps Miss Dosia has reported 
me to her parents, and found me wanting.” 

“Not she,” said Mr. Bellew robustly. “ Go 
and look in the glass, or, better still, in your 
mind and heart, boy, and if you can honestly 
say she’ll do better than you, why let her.” 

Hugh flushed. 

“ You think much too well of me,” he said, 
putting his hand on the old man’s shoulder. 

“ Haven’t I had the bringing up of you ? ’’ 
said Mr. Bellew, “ and am I not praising my 
own work ? And this Dosia Treherne’s a 
wonderful girl, if she turns up her nose at 
you.” 

“ I think she is,” said Hugh, with a sudden 
change in his voice that told his uncle 
volumes. 

“ I never expected you to fall in love with 
a commonplace woman,” said Mr. Bellew. 
“ Now those girls out there” — he nodded 
towards the distant garden— “are good girls, 
pretty girls, but no man of sense would want 
to make a life-partner of either of them. I 


or HER DEAR CHARMER. 


155 


never met,” said Mr. Bellew, deliberately and 
reflectively, one who was. Of all the lovely, 
admirable, good women I have ever known, 
there is not one to whom 1 could honestly 
have said, ‘ 1 will cleave to you, and you only, 
till death us do part’ You may want a thing 
very passionately and urgently at one period 
of your life, that you won’t want in the least 
at another. And boys won’t believe that time 
brings change of taste, change of everything 
— but Shakespeare has explained that better 
than I can.” 

Hugh , pale beneath the pain of those wounds 
for which he had been bidden to seek M. Pas- 
teur’s aid, made no reply. 

He thought his uncle’s views selfish and 
mean, and he felt within himself the power to 
be the one husband of one wife, for his nature 
was constant, and he was something more 
than a merely honourable man. 

Many a man who thinks he can lay claim 
to that title goes to the altar, swearing to 
love and cherish and cling to his wife, when, if 


156 


T OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


he said “ mistress,” it would be nearer the 
mark. 

Hugh was not one to rush into bonds 
lightly, or choose where he might look for 
disappointment, but he would not be likely to 
tire easily of such bondage — indeed, it may 
be allowed that women- are the first to realise 
that they are chained for life, and to fight 
wildly, if invisibly, against their gyves. 

“You look cut up,” said Mr. Bellew, slap- 
ping him on the shoulder. “ Cheer up ! But 
I won’t congratulate you till I’ve seen her. 
Going down into the town, eh ? I won’t 
come. I’ve letters to write. Ta-ta. Why, 
how the boy limps,” he added as Hugh went 
away, bound on a secret errand to the doctor 
of the place. 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER, 


157 


CHAPTER XV. 

“ Her gait it was graceful, her body was straight, 
And her countenance free from pride.” 

The Red House was all flashing and winking 
with life, as usual, when Hugh drove his uncle 
up to the door, but among the many faces 
adorning the many windows, he did not see 
Dosia’s. 

The children shouted with delight at the 
satin-skinned, high-stepping mare, and while 
some loudly hailed Hugh as an old friend, 
others made audible inquiries as to who his 
companion might be, one impudent little 
voice boldly accosting him as “ Old Pippin.” 

“ Mr. Treherne was at home,” they all 
announced, and indeed that fact was patent 
to the meanest observation as he reclined, 
sound asleep, on an easy-chair in front of the 


158 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER, 


dining-room window, from long habit sleep- 
ing through a turmoil that would have driven 
an ordinary man crazy. 

When Mr. Bellew, kissing'his hand to the 
prettiest of the little girls, had descended, 
Hugh asked if he should drive the cart round 
to the stables, but a groom just then appear- 
ing, Hugh had no choice but to follow his 
uncle and the maid-servant in. 

One would not think it likely that a middle- 
aged gentleman, caught fast asleep, would 
have the courage, on being awakened, to 
shout “Not at home ' in the face of his ad- 
vancing visitors, yet this is precisely what 
Colonel Treherne, a very Job in the bosom 
of his own family, did. 

Mr. Bellew got very red, and Hugh laughed 
as he came forward. 

“ I’m very sorry, sir,” he said, “ to disturb 
you, but my uncle, Mr. Bellew, thought he’d 
like to come over and have a chat with you 
about politics ” 

“ Oh ! it’s Valentine ! ” exclaimed Colonel 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER, 


159 


Treherne, his good humour, mightily rein- 
forced by a sound sleep, returning, “ very 
glad to see you both,” and he shook hands 
cordially with the pair. 

Very soon the two elders were deep in dis- 
cussion, and their opinions being emphati- 
cally those of all good country gentlemen, 
they became so pally that Hugh presently 
found with genuine alarm, that they were 
going to remain the rest of the afternoon, 
dine, and drive back to Regis afterwards. 

Five hours at the very least, thought the 
perplexed young man, of either avoiding 
Dosia, or Dosia avoiding him. He had 
meant, at least, to allow an interval to elapse 
in his wooing, and considering the terms upon 
which they had parted the day before yester- 
day, his mere presence in the house was at 
least a gross violation of good taste. 

If he had known that at that very moment 
he and Felida were photographed on Dosia’s 
memory, in the precise attitude which had 
made a raving maniac of Felix, then I think 


6o 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


this young man would have fled inconti' 
nently, and gone on fleeing until he had 
taken steps to assuage her wrath. 

But he did not know, and presently went 
out to look for her in rather a devil-may- 
care mood, to be sure, for he was still as rooted 
as ever in his right not to give explanations, 
and thought that if Dosia loved him as he her, 
she would believe in ‘him, no matter what 
flagitious testimony there might be against 
him. And the pain of the torn muscles in 
his legs was very great, and he wanted some 
one to pity him and be good to him, as Felida 
— poor little soul — had been to him when it 
was only his heart that ached. 

Perhaps Dosia would be sorry, he thought, 
if Felix potted him after all, for he did not 
underrate the danger from this desperate 
man, who believed that his hands were red 
with his wife’s blood, while counting Hugh as 
the precipitating cause of the crime, and to 
be punished accordingly. 

That Felix would not go to the cottage, 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER. l6i 

Hugh felt certain, till in his old wild way he 
had revenged her. There must be hell in 
that man’s heart to-day, thought Hugh, as he 
limped to a seat on the slope that led to the 
gingerbread castle and cast his eyes here and 
there in search of Dosia. 

But perhaps Onny had warned her, for 
though he lingered abroad a long time, guess- 
ing rightly that she would not be found in 
the house till the last minute, he searched in 
vain, and it was close on seven when he en- 
tered the Red House, and Colonel Treherne 
took him up to his room to make himself tidy 
for dinner. 

Then they went into the big, pleasant 
drawing-room, on the same floor, a room in 
which the odour of old roses lingered, and 
fresh ones rioted, and where Mrs. Treherne 
sat talking to his uncle. 

She greeted Hugh so pleasantly that he 
saw she had heard nothing, and he said to 
himself, good little girl,” approvingly, while 
she asked ; 


i 62 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


“ Where’s Dosia ? ” as if she expected 
them to come in together. 

And when Dosia came, immediately pre- 
ceding the servant announcing dinner, her 
greeting was no colder, no shyer, than is 
that of many a young girl to her lover before 
other people ; but Mr. Bellew looked at her in 
a way that Hugh understood, and the young 
man flushed with vexation for his beloved. 

For she had never appeared to less advan- 
tage than at that moment. It was the soul 
of Dosia, the spontaneity, the charm, that 
made her so truly delightful, and to-night the 
soul in her was dead, and all about her, even 
to her exquisite skin, seemed dulled also. 

But at table — a round one — where she sat 
beside Hugh, facing the window, the town- 
bred girl’s training came in, and she made 
conversation with the uncle and nephew 
easily and gracefully, with a touch too of that 
wit for which she was well known, so that to 
an outsider the party at the rose-shaded table 
in the cheerful room would have appeared a 


T OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 163 

merry and happy one, and Hugh as happy as 
the rest. 

But even if she dared to smile at him, he 
knew how entirely unapproachable she had 
made herself, and that the most sullen silence, 
or the wildest rudeness, would have been of 
better omen to him than the glancing, bright 
friendliness she accorded him. 

So superficially indeed did she notice him, 
that his extreme pallor passed unobserved, 
and gradually she left the conversation almost 
entirely to the men, becoming engrossed in 
something puzzling and mysterious in the 
rose garden on the other side of the road, and 
for which she could not readily account. 

The window was widely opened, as usual, 
and through it the light streamed across the 
road, throwing patches of brightness on the 
grass, while leaving the corners and back of 
the garden in deep shadow. 

Something was moving out there, not one of 
the children, who were all either in bed or at 
supper — something dark, and -Dosia could 


1 64 T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 

hardly tell why — the presence of danger to 
some one in that brightly-lit room from some 
one hidden outside, took strong possession of 
her mind. 

She slipped away so quietly when dessert 
began, that the two elder men, deep in poli- 
tics, did not even miss her, and when Mrs. 
Treherne, scenting something wrong, almost 
as noiselessly followed her daughter, Hugh 
was left alone, a fair target enough to the 
eyes of any person looking in from without. 

He was toying idly with his fruit, in much 
bodily pain, and out of heart now he recog- 
nised how impossible Dosia was of pacifica- 
tion, when a sharp report rang suddenly out, 
and a bullet whizzed past his head, and 
smashed a large mirror behind him. 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


165 


CHAPTER XVI. 

** So love did vanish with my state, 

Which now my soul repents too late.” 

At the same moment furious cries and the 
sound of a struggle were heard in the road, 
and the three men rushed out to find Dosia 
in her white gown fighting like grim death to 
wrench a pistol from the hand of a man in 
sailor clothes — Felix le F'euvre. 

To disarm him was, with Hugh, the work of 
a moment, and then he shook him like a rat, 
and could have killed him in his fury, when 
Dosia, bruised, her hair unbound, the bosom 
of her muslin gown in rags, staggered, and 
would have fallen had not Colonel Treherne 
caught her. 

“ Coward ! Scelerat ! ” he cried in his best 
British-French. “ Isn’t killing one woman 
enough for you 1 ” 


i66 


T OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


He dragged him into the house, and they 
made a strangely tragic group in the cheerful 
hall, and then Hugh bound the hands of the 
man, who was by now foaming at the mouth, 
and indeed three parts mad, with lust of 
blood, and hunger, and agony. 

“ Look you,” cried the bound man, address- 
ing the company at large, and which was con- 
siderably augmented by all the servants and 
a perfect Jacob’s ladder of chubby white 
figures on the stairs' he has stolen me wife^ 
he has debauched her, ruined her. I find 
her actually sitting on his knee — asleep, and 
on his knee ! and 1 kill her and then I go 
for to kill him also! I see him sitting in 
honour at table with a beautiful young lady 
beside him — I see him look at her with eyes 
of love — and she, she lies unburied yet ! And 
I lift my hand to shoot, and this brave young 
English mees steals close up beside me, just as 
I have my hand on the trigger, and she jerks 
my hand, yes, and I miss my aim. And 
when I would fire again, she fights me like a 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER, 167 

man — yes — just like a man ! And so your 
vilain life is spared, and you will do more 

mischief, while Felida ” the man’s voice 

broke, and he fell into wild and awful weep- 
ing. 

All this poured out in a torrent of French 
was entirely unintelligible to any one present 
save Hugh and Dosia, and as swiftly their 
eyes met. The boundless wrath, the absolute 
renunciation of him that spoke in her glance 
might have daunted a bolder and less inno- 
cent man than he, yet told how through her 
heart there ran a sharp and cruel pang at 
the fall of this man whom she loved . . . . 
She had credited him with obstinacy, folly 
even, but had clung to the hope that he 
would clear himself, and now, how much 
worse was the truth than her wildest imag- 
inations could have compassed ! Without a 
word she untied the cord with rapid fingers, 
and flung it far away from her, then drew 
herself up to her fullest height and turned 
upon Hugh. 


t 68 T'OTHER HEAR CHARMER, 

Her eyes shone like stars, her glorious hair 
Jiung in masses against the bared, drifted 
snow of her shoulders and bosom, it was 
with the gesture of a queen that she said in 
a vibrating voice : 

“ He is unarmed now — and you, sir, have 
the use of your fists, I suppose, as well as he. 
Father,” she went on, and Colonel Treherne 
looked at her as if he no longer knew her as his 
child, “ do not judge this man till you have 
heard his story. He is starving, he is half- 
mad, he has been betrayed ” (the scorn of 
her eyes would have drunk up Hugh’s very 
soul if he had been as guilty as she supposed), 
“ and I know not what sins he has committed 
in his despair, but now he needs taking care 
of,” and she led him away. 

“ What a "Splendid girl ! ” cried Mr. Bellew 
warmly as he followed, thrilled by Dosia as 
by an electric shock, “ and what a beauty 
too — and what a But I say, Hugh,” 
he added in his nephew’s ear, “ what have 
you done to offend her ? ” 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER. 169 

She drew the distraught man into a quiet 
room at the back of the house, and snatching 
up a shawl with which to cover her shoulders, 
made a sign to her father to keep the others 
away. 

“ Ask them to bring some bread and wine,’‘ 
she said. When it came; she fed the now 
cowed, trembling man as if he had been a 
child, very slowly too, for he had clearly not 
broken his fast for many hours, and in point 
of fact during the two days and a half of his 
vigilant watch on Hugh, the poor wretch had 
not once broken bread. 

Gradually his eyes grew less wild, and 
gratitude touched them as with healing dew. 

“ Why are you so good to me ? ” he said 
with trembling lips. “ I am a murderer, and 
should have committed a second murder to- 
night but for you, and in my madness I 
turned on you also — coward that I am ! ” 

Then recurring suddenly to the one, the 
burning thought of his heart, 

“ Felida ! ” he cried in anguish, “ Felida ! ” 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


170 

Hugh came forward abruptly. He was 
pale, and the expression of his eyes and mouth 
were stern. 

“You can do him no more good now,” he 
said coldly, addressing Dosia, “ leave him to 
me — I can heal him.” 

But at sound of his voice Felix started up, 
with the face of a devil, and an uplifted arm. 

“ Keep still,” said Hugh curtly, “ I will 
speak, and you s/ia/lhe2iY me. Will you re- 
tire ? ” he said to Dosia. 

“ No,” she said quietly. “ When he is quiet, 
when he is safe, I will leave him, not before.” 

The little group by the door wavered, 
knowing hardly whether to go or stay,^a little 
restive at being kept out in the cold, and un- 
able to grasp the situation, because they could 
not follow the Frenchman’s rapid talk. 

“ Father,” said Dosia, going up to him, 
“ will you not take Mr. Bellew and mother 
away ? Mr. Valentine has something to say 
to — to this man —something that he seems to 
think will do him good.” 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER, 


71 


They murmured, objected, but finally the 
little crowd melted away, leaving the two men 
and Dosia together. 

Felix staggered to the open window as if 
he needed air, and Hugh followed, and stood 
beside him. 

“ Now then,” he said sharply, “you have to 
listen to me, even if I have to hold you down 
while I do it. You would not believe me last 
night when I tried to tell you the truth about 
your wife, and if you don’t believe me now, 
go to M. le Docteur, who will corroborate 
every word I say.” 

“ He hissed Felix, drawing back as far as 
possible from Hugh’s hated person, “ the 
wretch in whose charge I left her, whom you 
have bought with your English gold, and 
made your tool Never ! ” 

“ But I say you shall. To be brief, then. 
You have been deceived about your wife.” 

“ Mon Dieu,'" cried the Frenchman hotly, 
“ is this your explanation — you admit it ? ” 

“ I did not say that 1 had deceived you,” 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


172 

said Hugh calmly, his face like a marble mask 
from pure physical pain, “ it is the Doctor, 
and your wife’s family who allowed you to 
marry your wife in ignorance of her state and 
health and history.” 

“ A history ! ” snarled the Frenchman, 
“ what history has a young unmarried French 
filette? It is only your English misses 
who ” 

“ Silence ! ” thundered Hugh, intensely 
conscious of a figure in the background; “ her 
health -history, I mean, I tell you she has 
been subject from childhood to curious fits 
of sleep, and total loss of memory, extending 
over weeks and even months, and that in one 
state of existence she does not know or re- 
member anything that has passed in the other. 
If she denied you yesterday, she will just as 
easily deny that she knows me to-mor- 
row.” 

“How can she deny anything said 
Felix, beginning to tremble exceedingly, 
“did I not strangle her,” gripping Hugh’s 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


173 


arm and speaking in a faint hoarse whisper, 
“ is she not dead 1 ” 

“You partly strangled her, certainly,” said 
Hugh, “ but she is not dead and to the 
poor wretch who heard, his voice was as the 
voice of an angel come down to the nether- 
most hell to save his soul alive. 

“ Not dead ! ” he said. “ Not dead ! ” he 
repeated, in an ecstasy, and babbled words, 
childish words of endearment, pleading for 
forgiveness. Then cruel memory thrust 
aside his brief joy. awakening him to tor- 
ment. 

“ If she be innocent,’" he said, “ and suffers 
from this strange forgetfulness, why is she 
Jiere alone with you, instead of in the home 
where T placed her, among her own people } ” 

“Ask M. le Docteur,’' said Hugh, prompt- 
ly, “ he brought her here, and it was only 
by merest accident I made her acquaintance. 
And I give you my word of honour,” said 
the young fellow heartily, “ that I have never 
said one word of love to her, nor she to me, 


174 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


and if no man ever wrongs you more than I 
have done, you may make yourself happy.” 

Felix thrust the dark hair from his- brow, 
and lifted his haggard face, aged ten years by 
that terrible day, to the ineffable peace and 
majesty of the blue and silver sky without. 
How it seemed to rebuke him, but how it 
stilled him too, and the wild, restless, tortured 
spirit seemed for a moment to merge it- 
self in that lovely illimitable space! 

Slowly his gaze came back to Hugh’s face, 
and he drew a sharp, sudden breath. 

“ Will you shake hands with me ? ” he said, 
humbly. “ I can’t say I rightly understand 
it all yet ; but I feel sure of one thing — that 
you’ve done her and me no harm ; and of 
another thing — that my sinful hands have 
not killed her. And for the present — that’s 
enough for me.” 

Their hands met in a cordial grip. 

“ I meant to kill you,” said Felix', “ and I 
should have done it too, but for the young 
lady, God bless her I And now you’ll take 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


175 


me to Felida ? I should not dare ” — he hung 
his head — “ to go alone.” 

“Not to-night,” said Hugh decisively, for 
he had work of his own to do before he slept, 
“ Be outside the door in the wall at eight 
o’clock to-morrow morning, and you’ll find 
me there.” 

“ Felida ! Felida 1 ” cried Felix, with delir- 
ious joy ; then, as if the house were too small 
to contain him and his rapture, would have 
rushed out into the night. 

But Hugh stayed him. 

“ There is much yet to tell you,” he said, 
and compelled him to hearken while he re- 
peated as nearly as possible word for word 
all the doctor had given him of Felida’s case. 

He had two hearers to convince, not one, 
but there are some things that a woman can 
never be made to understand, though she 
will fathom others that are beyond a man’s 
most brilliant comprehension. 

And how Felida, whether asleep or awake, 
came to be sitting on Hugh’s knee without 


176 


V OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


Hugh’s aiding and abetting her was just one 
of those things, so that when Felix had de- 
parted, and Hugh turned with throbbing 
heart to seek Dosia, she was gone. 


An hour later, Hugh, with hat rammed 
down over his eyes, and face as white as 
chalk, was sending the mare along at the rate 
of twenty miles an hour along the road to 
Regis, while Mr. Bellew’s eulogies of Dosia 
kept pace with their speed. 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER, 


177 


CHAPTER XVII. 

*If I would help thee now, ' he said, 

It were a deadly sin.’' 

Hugh pushed the postern door open and 
slipped in, followed by the trembling figure of 
Felix. He saw in a moment that Felida was 
there, at her old place in the summer-house, 
her work spread out before her, her needle 
flying in and out with a species of rage, as if 
she could not make it fly fast enough. 

She had left the doctor over his breakfast, 
and hurried out here to make the most of her 
time, and indeed, so engrossed was she, that 
she did not even look up as the two men ap- 
proached her, and then only because they 
were keeping the light from her work. 

Dull and pale, all the soul of her gone, it 

12 


178 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER, 


was but a little French ouvriere who looked 
up at them, turning deadly pale at the sight, 
and moving as if to fly, only to fall back with 
a helpless cry of fear that wrung Felix’s 
heart. 

“ Felida,” he cried, falling on his knees 
before her, forgetful of all Hugh’s coaching, 
and that he was to approach her as a stranger, 
“ forgive me ; yesterday I was mad — I who 
would not willingly hurt a hair of your head ! ” 

He kissed a fold of her gown, and she drew 
it away, casting a pitiful look around as if 
seeking a friend to protect her : but Hugh’s 
face, full of tenderness, was strange to her 
also, and her gaze went past him, so that he 
too felt a pang at being so entirely forgotten. 

“ Don’t be a fool,” he said in an energetic 
whisper to Felix as he dragged him up ; 
can’t you see she is frightened to death The 
doctor should have prepared her first.” 

He thrust him on one side and said : 

“ Mademoiselle, we are intruding upon you. 
Is Monsieur le Docteur within 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


79 


She looked at him, her eyes dwelling with 
a sense of pleasure on his face. Her own 
softened, and she exclaimed in French: 

“ Ah ! I do remember you now ; you did 
save me yesterday " 

Hugh smiled. The two young faces look- 
ing at each other had so satisfied, so sweet, 
so comely an air, that a sharp twinge of jeal- 
ousy dug its talon into Felix’s heart, and 
almost stopped his breath. 

“ It was a terrible mistake,” said Hugh, 
“ and he is heartbroken about it. Will you 
not forgive him ? ” he added, gently, his ear- 
nest eyes glowing deep and blue as sapphires 
beneath his crown of close-cropped golden 
curls. 

“ Poor man ! ” said Felida, swayed by that 
gentle pleading. “ He has come from losing 
his wife, I suppose,” she added in a whisper, 
“ and he thought I was she ! ” 

“ Did I hurt you very much, my Felida, 
my poor, little one ? ” burst out the artless 
Felix, carried away by his longing to take her 


i8o 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


in his arms and kiss those cruel marks made 
by his fingers. 

“ Go and fetch M. le Docteur,” said Hugh, 
imperiously ; but a devil was rising in Felix’s 
heart, and he did not stir. 

“ Here he comes?” exclaimed Hugh, and 
Felix turned to see the portly shape, well- 
dressed, well-shaved, well -breakfasted, and 
perfectly contented with what it was, and what 
it beheld, coming slowly down the garden 
path, lighting a cigar as it came. 

The sight angered Felix, and for the mo- 
ment he forgot Felida. Rushing to meet the 
doctor, he cried : 

“ Ah, monsieur! Is it thus you have re- 
warded the trust I placed in you ? ” 

“ You are a little excited, Felix,” said the 
doctor comfortably, “ but I am glad to see 
you.” (As indeed he was, though he had 
never expected to have that pleasure again.) 
“ But don’t you think, my friend, that before 
blaming me you have a little account to settle 
with your wife ? I had no wish to deceive 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER. l8i 

you as to the state of Felicia’s health— quite 
the contrary. I even urged her and her 
family to make you acquainted with a state 
of things that you must inevitably, and per- 
haps disagreeably, find out.” 

“If they deceived me— if Felicia” — the 
man’s voice faltered — “ did so also, it was for 
you to tell me the truth ; and do you suppose 
it would make any difference to me Only 
I should have watched over her, taken care 
of her, or seen that she was never without 
some one to do so ; and,” he added, with a 
touch of sternness, “ I would never have left 
her in your charge.” 

The doctor put out two fingers and patted 
the young man on the shoulder. 

“ Console yourself,” he said; “you have 
married a woman who is a subject of interest 
to the whole scientific world, and who has 
absorbed valuable years of my time and study 
— years tliat I do not even grudge. If you 
at first find these absences of memory a little 
awkward ” 


i 82 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


“ Awkward ! ” repeated Felix, vivaciously, 
“ Look you,” he exclaimed with feeling, “ I 
am a man who must always be much away 
from my wife. Am I to have to woo her 
over again every time I come home, or pos- 
sibly return to find she has fallen in love with 
somebody else in my absence ? ” 

He turned to look at the two standing by 
the arbour, and the doctor looked also. 

Hugh Valentine had brought out from the 
interior the sketching tools he had left there 
when so rudely disturbed on the previous 
day, and Felida, her work neglected, was 
glancing down at them idly, unaware that 
she had ever seen them before. Suddenly 
she looked up, and at him. Was it only 
gratitude, or some struggling memory that 
dawned in her soft, dark eyes, drawing Felix 
jealously back to her, till he stood by the 
side of him at whom she gazed ? 

“ Felida ! ” cried Felix, in a voice of agony. 
She started and looked at him — at them 
both. The contrast was too violent. Her 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER. 183 

eyes were slowly leaving her husband’s to 
seek Hugh’s, when the latter found himself 
abruptly shouldered out of the way by the 
doctor’s powerful hand. 

“You must go away,” he said in his ear; 
“do you hear? For Felida’s sake and his 
you must go away. Here are your tools,” 
and he thrust them into his hand. 

“ And I may not even say good-bye ? ” 
said Hugh indignantly, as he found himself 
hurried along the path at express speed. 

“ No, you may not,” said the doctor. 
“ Have you not done mischief enough al- 
ready ? — harm enough ? You must not even 
look back.” 

But at the postern gate Hugh turned. 

There stood the girl, her white face turned 
towards him, her eyes following him, and on 
the ground before her a man who clasped 
her knees. 

The door closed softly. H ugh was gone. 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


184 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

She said, ‘ I had rather have a kiss. 

Childe Waters, of thy mouth. 

Than I would have Cheshire and Lancashire both, 
That lie by north and south.' ” 

“ You is very ugly, Dosia ! ” said a passionate 
little voice through the shut schoolroom door 
outside which a young man was standing 
with bent head, listening for a favourable 
chance to go in. 

“ Some people don’t think so,” said Dosia. 

“Oh! ugly people always admires ugly 
people,” said the first voice in a tone of im- 
mense contempt. And then Hugh, thinking 
Dosia was going to be schoolmistress for 
ever, boldly opened the door, and walked in. 

Dosia was sitting with her back to him, 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 185 

and it was just as straight, and the poise of 
her head as proud, as* if she had not been 
racked through all the long hours of the past 
night by torture and jealous doubt. But all 
the same, when Mademoiselle, who was the 
sort of person to lie down in the road and let 
the clouds roll by, kept her room with a sick 
headache, the girl stepped into the breach, 
and after breakfast promptly sat as many of 
the youngsters as she could catch, down to 
lessons. 

Perhaps, too, she thought there was safety 
in numbers, in case Hugh, after his unavail- 
ing efforts to obtain an interview with her 
last night, should come over this morning, 
and make another attempt to see her. But 
when she heard those firm, masterful steps 
coming up behind her, she trembled with a 
sudden sense of how puerile a girl’s artifice is 
against a strong man’s determination, and 
the words of the lesson she had begun to 
read out, died on her lips. 

“ Children,” he said, as the youngsters, 


i86 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


scenting a holiday, gave him delighted greet- 
ing (Onny was luckily absent), “ you can go 
and play. I want to talk to Dosia.” 

A scattering of books, a pushing back of 
chairs, a clattering of sturdy little feet, a rush 
of voices, a door left wide open, and the room 
was clear. 

Dosia leant her elbow on her hand, look- 
ing down at the ruled copy-book before her. 

Hugh kneeled down beside her, and so got 
a good look into her face, which was pale, 
and all the sweeter for its pallor, despite the 
touch of sternness about her closed lips, and 
the coldness of the eyes she slowly lifted to 
his. 

So close were they that they looked, as it 
were, through clear wells into each other’s 
souls ; and then Hugh said : 

“ Don’t you believe me, dear ? ” 

Like the- ripple made by the wind on water, 
there came a change in Dosia’s questioning, 
eager regard ; it wavered, fell back, then 
rallied to gaze again. 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER. 187 

“ Hugh,” she said, “ do you think you have 
behaved honourably by me — and that poor 
girl ?” 

No answer, but Hugh’s eyes were honour- 
able, if ever a man’s were. 

“ Could you not have told me about it — if it 
were only an innocent idyll, and no harm in 
it ? ” 

No answer, only Hugh’s arm went round 
the girl. He held her fast, though he did not 
venture to draw her towards him. 

“ Onny ! ” she said faintly, with an anxious 
glance at the window. “ And did you think 
it a proper thing, to keep me waiting while 
you talked to her ? ” 

Hugh bent his head, and kissed the little 
fist so inexorably doubled up on her knee. 

“ And — and you admire dark people,” said 
Dosia, a little confused and disarmed by these 
tactics of the enemy. 

“ Yes. But I love 2, fair one,” said Hugh, 
mumbling her little hand with kisses. 

“ And — and — what would you have said if 


I as TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER. 

you had found me sitting on a young man’s 
knee? Would you have believed such a 
monstrous” (she tried to get her hand away, 
and her eyes sparkled) “ impossible story as 
that I had fallen asleep / ” 

“ I should have killed him outright,” said 
Hugh, “and put you on my own knee. And 
then I should have asked you for an explana- 
tion.” 

“ And you would have believed what I told 
you ? ” 

Hugh’s other arm, sweeping the school- 
books from the table, had gone round Dosia’s 
waist now, and from that strait prison, in 
which she blushed and trembled, he forced 
her to look him full in the face. 

“ Yes,” he said deliberately, “ I should have 
believed you. And I shall make you believe 
me too in time — if I do not leave you, and if 
I tell you at least once in every hour in the 
twenty-four. And I think I am v^*y forgiv- 
ing. Remember it was you who choked me 
off, when I came down here hot-foot for your 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER. 189 

answer, and, like the fickle, inconstant little 
jade that you are, put me such miles away 
from you that I could never get near enough 
to bring you to book.” 

“ So you went for consolation elsewhere,” 
she said, trying to free herself. “ And she 
was very pretty,” she added, swallowing 
something hard. 

“ No — not pretty, but a pleasant little 
soul,” he said, “ who let me talk to my heart’s 
content, and who was always good-tempered 
when a certain other person ” 

“ And she was very fond of you ? ” said 
Dosia, still fighting against the pricks. 

“ Not a bit. You see she knew she was 
married— and I suppose felt a perfect matron. 
To be sure she did call me a boy sometimes. 
And she will settle down as happily as pos- 
sible with that poor Felix ”— he paused— 
“after a bit.” 

“ Hughf said Dosia, in a whisper, “did 
you ever — ever — kiss her — as a friend, you 
know } ” 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER. 


190 

“ Dosia, did you ever — ever kiss one of 
your many lovers, as a friend, you know ? ” 

Dosia disdained to answer, only tried with 
all her strength to unlock the hands round 
her waist. 

“ Now,” he said, “ don’t hurt your soft 
little fingers, and it’s no good. I’ve got you 
now, and I mean to keep you.” 

“No,” she said, very low, “for you have 
not got my spirit yet. Hugh,” she said sud- 
denly, and the look, the love were so true, and 
sweet, and womanly, that no man could have 
doubted her goodness then, “ if I married 
you, and you became like most of the hus- 
bands I have seen, it would break me up ; I 
should go to moral ruin — to the dogs, as you 
men call it— and if there could not be true 
sympathy of heart and mind and tastes between 
us, and, best of 2^, faithfulness in all things^ 
I would rather part with you now, now with 
your dear arms round me — for I love you, 
Hugh ! — Oh ! I love you ” 

“ Little darling,” said Hugh rapturously. 


T'OTHER DEAR CHARMER. 191 

“ — than that we should come to unlove 
each other, and hate to be bound together. 
Won’t you get tired of me, Hugh ? ” she said 
wistfully, and laying her two hands on his 
shoulders. “ I am only a girl, and men have 
so much in their lives — so much ” 

But Hugh’s arms had wound themselves 
closer round her, and his head had fallen 
forward on her shoulder, so that she could 
not see his face. 

Something more than mere love was in 
this man’s heart then. . . he was taking 

a sacred vow unto himself that this girl, with 
her pure and lofty ideals (the very sort that 
when once put wrong is so much more likely 
to come a cropper in life than she who has 
never aspired to anything, and therefore can 
never fall), should not be disillusioned by 
him, but that he would love her, cling to her, 
make her happy with all his poor strength, 
to his life’s end. 

There were tears in his eyes when he lifted 
his head, and suddenly clasped both ^r 
arms round his neck. 


192 


TOOTHER DEAR CHARMER, \ 


“ Kiss me, Dosia, before Onny comes — I 
hear his voice — kiss me.” 

A shower of white rose petals fell through 
the open window, scattering their perfume 
as they lay. All her life long that breath 
mingled with Dosia s memory of the moment. 
. . . . And Onny arrived just too late. 


THE END. 


T’OTHER 

DEAR CHARMER 


BY 

HELEN MATHERS 

AUTHOR OF 

“THE MYSTERY OF NO. I3,” “MY JO, JOHN,” ETC. 


NEW YORK 

JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY 

150 WORTH ST., COR. MISSION PLACE 











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